


Amendments

by JinxQuickfoot



Series: Whumptoberverse [6]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Feels, Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, Civil War Fix-It, Day 6, Gen, Hostage Situations, Hurt Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes is a Good Bro, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Protective Bruce Banner, Protective Tony Stark, Science Bros, Torture, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:34:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26738935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JinxQuickfoot/pseuds/JinxQuickfoot
Summary: Natasha jogged up behind him, gun drawn. Tony didn’t even have time to get out a “Huh?” before the door to the alien ship opened, and Bruce Banner stumbled out into the Compound’s landing zone.----------------------------------------------------------------------------Bruce returns to earth after a year and a half as the Hulk in space, to find the team a lot different than when he left it.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Tony Stark
Series: Whumptoberverse [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921831
Comments: 129
Kudos: 181
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Whumptober 2020 Day 6
> 
> Prompts: “Get it Out”/No More/“Please…”
> 
> Relationship: Tony & Bruce
> 
> Can be read as a standalone, but exists in the same timelines as the other fics in the Whumptoberverse. I know a few people skipped "A Quiet Place" because of the TWs, so what you need to know from that one: Mac Gargan has been dealing weapons, Natasha, Steve, Sam and Clint failed to take him down and now he has some of Tony's tech and escaped again.

Tony really hated General-Secretary Thaddeus Ross. 

Well, maybe hated was the wrong word. No - it was the right word. Tony hated him, and he was pretty sure that the feeling was mutual at this point. There was always a collected air of both exasperation and tension every time they had to sit down together to discuss the progress of the Avengers; once a month, as per the terms of the amended Accords.

‘An Avengers representative’ was what the Accords stated, but Tony knew it had to be him, even though the meetings were a waste of time. Ross proposed stricter Amendments. Tony provided every argument in the book to stop them from getting passed. Then they went home, nothing achieved, and having lost time better spent elsewhere.

They had become one of Tony’s favorite times of the month.

That was depressing and he knew it. But at least with Ross, he had an excuse to be openly hostile, to say everything on his mind, only stopping when Rhodey stepped in to diffuse the tension when it became counterproductive. His words, not Tony’s. Tony argued that the whole meeting was counterproductive. He had made no move to end them.

Because the tension between him and Ross was nothing compared to the atmosphere that was plaguing the Compound these days. While they had instated a ‘no-politics-at-family-dinner’ policy, meaning that the Accords weren’t to be discussed outside of official meetings, the underlying mistrust and betrayal could still be felt. At least, Tony could feel it.

There had been a clear divide in the beginning. ‘Team Iron Man’ and ‘Team Cap’ as the media had dubbed it, as though they were some stupid Twilight love triangle. Everyone was cordial; everyone was divided. Fine. Tony still had his side.

Then Vision had left.

Tony didn’t blame him. At least he had apologized, leaving a recorded message with F.R.I.D.A.Y. explaining that while his loyalties were with Tony, his heart was with Wanda (even though, as he stated in the message, he technically didn’t have a heart, but he felt the sentiment was apt in this situation).

He had even left Tony an out, which was more than the rest of them had done. A detailed report of why Tony had decided that Vision should be deactivated after the misfire that had caused Rhodey’s accident had been found on Tony’s server along with the message. It was a better story than another outlawed Avenger or another one of Tony’s designs (at least in part) going rogue. Tony had been grateful for the consideration even as he read how it was worded. It was clear that Vision wasn’t planning on coming back.

He would always have Rhodey and he knew it. It had been that way since MIT. Even after Tony’s decisions had led to Rhodey’s fall (Rhodey denied that, but Tony knew it was true), he had stayed. He came with Tony to every meeting with Ross, as both backup and buffer, until he couldn’t anymore. The public image of the Avengers was one of infighting and weakness, and after that had led to Sam’s and then Peter’s capture, Tony and Pepper were doubling down on their PR. Which meant sending Rhodey to as many military events as possible, often with Sam by his side.

Tony wasn’t sure when Rhodey and Sam had become such good friends, and he didn’t begrudge them for it. Or that, after some initial friction, Rhodey and Steve got on just fine these days as well. That Clint and Natasha bickered and teased and backed each other up as if the fight on that tarmac never happened. That Wanda had sent Vision through several stories and into the earth and he had left everything else behind for her. That Peter had slotted in with the rest of them like a Tetris piece. That even the new guy, Scott, had fit in better with them than Tony did these days. And most of all, that Tony was feeling…

An annoying voice in Tony’s brain knew that the words he was looking for were ‘left out’, but he crushed them down whenever they surfaced. He wasn’t a twelve-year-old who didn’t get invited to a middle school sleepover. He’d been pretty much on his own for years, and he was fine being on his own now, even if it was in the building he technically owned. Even if he had fought for them to stay when so many others had decided it wasn’t worth calling a home any longer. Even if they were only staying with him because they didn’t have anywhere else to go.

“I’m sorry, am I boring you, Stark?”

Tony snapped back to the meeting at hand. Ross was glaring at him, sifting through a stack of papers in front of him. _Paper._ The dinosaur.

“I mean, I thought that was obvious.” Tony offered him a lazy grin as he stretched back in his seat, knocking the back of the chair where Rhodey usually sat. He’d been held up overseas, but promised Tony he’d be back in a few days. Which Tony would be fine with. If Peter hadn't been visiting May in the safehouse she had been staying in since Peter's kidnapping. If Happy wasn’t sticking resolutely to Pepper’s side as she met with a potential investor in Japan for Project Cassandra.

Ross rolled his eyes, gathering up his papers.

“Does that mean we’re done?” Tony sat back up. Usually by now he’d be daydreaming about being in his workshop, music blaring, hands busy, a glass of scotch on the workbench next to him. He could do three-quarters of those things. He hadn’t taken a drink since Sokovia.

Didn’t mean he didn’t want one though.

“Almost. We have one more item on the agenda.”

Tony didn’t hide his groan, slumping back in his seat. He wasn’t as upset as he was letting on. Yes, finishing the meaning meant his workshop, but with that safe haven came with wishing he was upstairs in the common areas. With the others. He knew he could, if he wanted to, they weren’t stopping him. But they also weren’t exactly inviting him either.

Any self-pity left his mind when a girl was led into the room in handcuffs. 

Tony shot upright from his slumped position, already getting to his feet. “What the hell, Ross?”

The girl was barely older than Wanda, bone-thin and swamped in the gray prison jumpsuit she was wearing, head bowed. Limp, dark hair clung to sallow cheeks, and the handcuffs were thick, heavy, glowing slightly blue. Tony recognized them. He had helped design them. They were built for containing enhanced.

“We found her in an abandoned Hydra base,” Ross continued, as though this was no different from delivering any other report. “Enhanced, although the committee has declared her non-lethal. As per Amendment 9a of the Sokovia Accords, we are turning her over to you for the mandatory probation period and house arrest within the Compound.”

Tony mentally ran through Amendment 9a, which essentially outlined that all non-lethal enhanced (i.e. anyone who wasn’t trying to directly kill them) be housed at the Compound until the Avengers deemed them worthy to join their ranks or could find them suitable housing elsewhere. It wasn’t ideal, and one of the points Tony and Steve had fought over most, with Tony and Ross landing on this compromise. He was fairly sure however (he was sure, his memory for detail was near-perfect) that nowhere in the Amendment stated that Ross or any other government official had the right to lock up said enhanced in cuffs or, judging by the jumpsuit, the Raft.

“Take those off,” Tony ordered, still on his feet.

Ross bristled. “All security protocols around enhanced individuals are being followed in accordance with -”

“Shut it, _Thunderbolt._ ” Tony shooed the two guards away from the girl, who refused to look at him. “Hi,” he said, ignoring the others in the room. “You’re not going to carve a hole in my chest or anything if I take those off, are you?”

The girl finally looked up, and Tony was taken away by the storm gray eyes. The resolution in them didn’t match the hunched posture. She shook her head.

“There.” Tony tapped at his watch, spinning it out into an Iron Man gauntlet, making Ross boil.

“You can not bring a _weapon_ into a government building, Stark.”

“Legally, it’s a prosthetic,” Tony shot back, breaking open the handcuffs. “I’m not making that up - check the court records from 2011. So, meeting adjourned, yeah?” Without waiting for an answer, he led the girl from the room.

***

Her name was Aceso, and that was as much as Tony got out of her before she passed out in the passenger seat of his Audi, exhausted. She slept the entire drive back to the Compound, which Tony was grateful for. This was _not_ his area of expertise. He’d pay for whatever medical care the girl needed, make sure she passed her assessments and ticked all the boxes, and then he’d set her up somewhere to live. The middle part (the hard part, he’d admit) would be better facilitated by Clint, who had a history of bringing strays into S.H.I.E.L.D. and then the Avengers’ fold, and Sam, who knew enough about working with PTSD and veterans to steer the kid towards the right medical professionals.

Tony shot her a sideways look. She was tiny, but she was probably closer to her mid-twenties. Not really a kid then.

She’d be ok. Tony’s skills were better served elsewhere. Like reworking Amendment 9a. Or maybe just getting Ross fired altogether. That last one might actually be fun.

Tony was working on ‘getting Ross fired plan 27e’ when he saw the alien ship in the Compound’s landing zone.

He slammed on the brakes, waking Aceso with a string of curses as she was jerked forward. Tony instinctively threw his hand across her chest even as the seatbelt locked and held her into place. She glanced down at his arm with a flash of something Tony almost missed and didn’t have time to register before she locked onto what he was seeing. “What is that?”

“Stay here,” Tony ordered, already moving out of the car. “I’ll come back and get you when it’s safe. _Don’t_ run off.”

The nanotech formed around him as the car locked behind him, taking off into the sky. “Fill me in, Fri.”

_“I assume you’re referring to the alien spacecraft that has landed in the Compound loading zone.”_

“No, I want to know the latest Taco Bell deals. Yes, the alien spacecraft - it’s definitely alien?”

_“The gamma radiation detected would indicate so, Boss. Also Captain Rogers, Agent Romanoff, Agent Barton, and Staff Sergeant Wilson are returning from their expedition to locate Mac Gargan.”_

Sure enough, the quinjet that had left early yesterday morning was now hovering over the nearly filled landing zone, gently bringing it down in the little space left. As he looked closer, Tony noticed the scratches and holes in the plane’s exterior that should have impossible. “Did they fly it off a cliff? At least tell me they got Gargan.”

_“They did not. Agent Barton has also been critically injured.”_

Tony swore as he touched down next to the alien spacecraft. Because the universe couldn’t just hand him one crisis at a time, could it? “Ok, tell Cho to prep the med bay, send a stretcher out here.”

_“Already done, Boss.”_

Natasha jogged up behind him, gun drawn, wearing nothing but underwear and an oversized t-shirt and smelling like rotten eggs, part of her hair chopped off. Tony didn’t even have time to get out a “Huh?” before the door to the alien ship opened, and Bruce Banner stumbled out into the Compound’s landing zone.

The man looked like a living skeleton, emaciated and frail, gray hairs starting to streak through the thick brown curls Tony remembered from a year and a half ago. His eyes were nearly sunken in, huge bags hanging underneath like dark shadows and…Tony blinked. Were those _his_ clothes Bruce was wearing?

“Bruce,” Tony said, taking a tentative step forward, arms outstretched, ready to catch the physicist if he fell. Bruce squinted at him, minus glasses, but Tony suspected it was much more from lost eyewear. “You alright there, bud?”

Bruce finally seemed to focus in on who exactly was in front of him, eyes going wide with recognition. “Nat? Tony?”

Natasha didn’t stow her gun. “You alone?”

Bruce seemed to take a moment to register her words. “Yes,” he whispered. “I’m on my own. I’ve been on my own for…I’m on my own.”

“Why don’t you come inside, yeah?” Tony risked another step forward, and a moment later he was glad he did, as Bruce completely lost his balance. Tony dived forward, catching him, his weight bringing them both to the ground.

“Sorry,” Bruce muttered.

“It’s ok.” Tony wasn’t sure what else to say. “Hardly a tumble.”

“Sorry,” Bruce repeated.

“You hurt? You look like an extra from Jason and the Argonauts.”

“Sorry. Sorry, sorry…” And then it was like a dam had broken, and Bruce couldn’t stop.

The med team arrived almost impossibly fast until Tony realized later that F.R.I.D.A.Y. had already had them on standby for where the quinjet returned from the Gargan mission. It didn’t take more than a glance to see that had gone horribly wrong, but all he got from Natasha was that Gargan had gotten away and not to send any more Avengers or New S.H.I.E.L.D. agents anywhere near the forest he had been camping out in.

It was only after Tony had gotten them all secure in medical care that he remembered that he had an enhanced, probably very confused girl waiting for him up the road. He didn’t want to leave Bruce, but Cho made it clear that he was being more of a hindrance than a help, and even Tony registered it would be a little cold to send a stranger to go pick up Aceso after Ross had been keeping her contained for god knows how long.

“Sorry,” Tony said immediately as he landed, the Bleeding Edge armor folding away into its housing unit. “Team emergency.” 

Aseco followed him with steady eyes, a little more relaxed than when he had picked her up in Ross’s office. “Anyone hurt?”

_Yeah. Everyone._ “Nothing my staff can’t handle.”

“I can help with that.”

Tony had a hundred questions about that, but now wasn’t the time. “We got it.”

He drove around the ship Bruce had landed in (add to the ever-growing to-do list: figure out what to do with an alien spaceship), and then showed Aceso into the Compound. “So this is home.” He gestured around, distracted, wanting to get back to the med bay. “I’ll find you some rooms.”

“Do I have to stay in them?”

“Not if you don’t like them, we have plenty of living space here.” After an awkward pause, he caught on to what she actually meant. “You can go anywhere in the Compound. Free reign, stretch your legs. Well, anywhere except everyone’s private rooms, unless they invite you. And my workshop, for safety reasons. But anywhere is up to you. You’re not a prisoner here.”

“But I can’t leave.”

Tony hesitated, looking for the right words. “Look, no one is going to make you stay here. But it’s going to be a whole lot easier if you do. Ok?”

She met him with those storm gray eyes, and for a moment Tony saw the anger there, totally unconcealed before she corrected herself. Tony was thrown, then rationalized that if he had been detained by Ross and then sent off with some other stranger he’d be pretty pissed too. He was still relieved when Hill appeared around the corner, easy smile already fixed in place, holding out her hand to her. “Aceso? I’m Director Hill, but you call me Maria.”

She didn’t take Hill’s hand. Hill took it in stride. “You ok if I take over from here, Tony? I think you’re needed down in medical.”

Tony shot her a look of gratitude as he passed their newest acquisition off and hurried back down to medical to check on the rest of their team.

***

Tony all but forgot about Aceso over the next few days, choosing to spend the time by Bruce’s bedside overseeing his recovery. On the fourth day, Natasha had dragged Tony out and marshaled him into a shower. He had griped until she had pointed out that she and Bruce needed to have a long, and very private, discussion of their own, and if Tony interrupted it –

She hadn’t finished the threat. She hadn’t needed to; Tony got the picture.

On the seventh day, even Tony could admit that there were duties he could no longer neglect. He had SI meetings to attend to and a weapons’ dealer now in possession of his tech to pursue. He had done as much as could from his Starkpad at Bruce’s bedside, but if he was scared of Natasha’s threats, it was nothing compared to how he felt about Pepper’s, and eventually the coaxing of the real world won out. Natasha offered (demanded) to sub as Bruce’s bedside companion while he smiled for the SI board and joined Hill for restarting their hunt for Gargan.

But when he returned, it wasn’t Natasha by Bruce’s side. It was Steve.

Tony felt like he’d been knocked sideways. Bruce and Steve were…chatting. He couldn’t hear what they were saying through the hospital room door, but Bruce was smiling. They both were.

The second Tony felt the possessiveness he felt sick. Because, yes, he had stayed by Bruce’s side because they were friends, because he was concerned, for Bruce’s sake. Of course. But if he was being honest with himself – something which, annoyingly, he was getting better at as the years went on – he couldn’t deny the underlying, more selfish motivations.

When Tony had seen Bruce come back, his first thoughts had been relief for Bruce’s safe return and concern for his near-starved condition. But as the days passed and it became clear that Bruce was in no long-term danger, Tony had started to look forward to returning to their days in the lab together, building and theorizing what no one else could dream of, let alone keep up with. He had established the Tower as a home base for all the Avengers after New York, but Bruce was the only one who stayed there full-time and, though he had tried to hide it, Tony had reveled in the company of someone who not only equaled (and in some areas, he xfcouldn’t deny, exceeded) his intellect, but was willing to work with him, not against him.

Tony had really missed Dr Bruce Banner.

_Be great if we had a Hulk, right about now. Any shot?_

_You really think he’d be on our side?_

Tony hadn’t talked to Bruce about the Accords yet. To his knowledge, none of them had, waiting until he had adjusted somewhat from his eighteen months in space as the Hulk before dumping that truckload of complications on his head as well. Bruce had been thrown enough by them living in the Compound as opposed to the Tower; Tony had figured discussing Siberia and all that had led up to it could wait.

And he had assumed he would be him telling the story. He didn’t want Bruce to take his side. He didn’t even want Bruce to agree with him. He just wanted…

He wasn’t sure what he wanted. But Bruce hearing everything from Steve wasn’t it.

Realizing that Steve had probably heard Tony coming due to his enhanced hearing, was even now listening to Tony hang outside the door like an awkward guest early to a party, Tony pulled on his glasses and a smile and pushed the door open. “You’re up. I could have ordered shawarma.”

Bruce managed a thin smile back. “Once was enough.”

“I thought you liked it.”

“We’d just finished defeating an alien army controlled by a sociopathic god. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s dehydrated meat curry would have tasted like ambrosia.”

“Hm.” Tony sauntered into the room, dropping into the chair opposite Steve’s, still faking casualness. “Meat curry. That’s so suspicious. What is the meat? Clint says it’s rat.”

“It’s not rat,” Steve chimed in. 

Tony raised an eyebrow. “You would know?”

“Wartime, low rations…”

Tony narrowed his eyes, unsure if Steve was joking. Tony had had his fair amount of fun with the super-soldier when he was first settling into the Tower, but occasionally Steve would use Tony’s ignorance of the working class right back at him. Back when they’d had that kind of rapport – any rapport, instead of the stiff politeness they affected when they had to be in the same room together. Their conversation during Peter’s abduction had been the only exception.

Tony kept up the light conversation with Steve for another twenty or so minutes, which might have been a new post-Siberia record for them, until Bruce yawned widely and apologized, and Steve had jumped in with a “There’s nothing to apologize for” even as Tony said, “Well if we’re boring you we’ll leave." Five minutes later, Bruce was fast asleep, and Steve was turning to Tony with a, “Can we talk?”

The two moved into an empty hospital room, Tony trying hard not to fidget. He was very rarely alone in a room with Steve these days, and he’d be lying if he said that doing so without any kind of Iron Man armor close by still made him deeply uncomfortable. Of course, he knew Steve wasn’t going to close the distance between him and strike his chest, but the very knowledge that Steve could and Tony would have no way to defend himself was enough to put him on edge. He rubbed his wrist, wishing he had the nanotech gauntlet on hand, then cursed at himself for wishing it, because he knew he didn’t need it.

He still wished he had it though.

“What’s up, Cap?”

Steve folded his arms across his chest, leaning against one of the hospital walls. “You haven’t told Bruce about the Accords.”

It wasn’t a question. “Neither have you.”

“I didn’t want you to think I was trying to get my word in before you.”

And, damn, because as much as Tony wanted to offer up a snarky reply to that, it was difficult to think of one when he had been thinking that exact thing barely half an hour ago. Instead he said, “Yeah, well. He’s been through a lot. Didn’t want to overload him. He hasn’t even told us what happened to him yet.”

Steve nodded in agreement. “That makes sense. But he’s getting better now. And he’s going to find out sooner or later. Not to mention we’re going to have to declare him to the Accords committee. We legally should have done so already.”

Tony waved that last bit off. “So we’ll smoosh some arrival dates around. All my medical staff have signed extremely strict NDAs.”

“And then?”

“I guess we’ll have to convince him to sign.” And wasn’t that uncomfortably familiar.

Steve must have registered the look on Tony’s face because he said quietly, “It’ll be different this time. I’ll be backing you up.”

“Sure.” Tony definitely wasn’t in the mood to revisit those good ol’ days right now. “Ok. I’ll tell him when he wakes up.”

Steve shifted, uncomfortable. “Actually, I was thinking Nat should do it.”

Even as Tony opened his mouth to argue he realized that made sense. Natasha had started on Tony’s side, had seen the Accords as he had – what they were _supposed_ to be. And had left to join Steve when she had seen what they really were. She and Bruce were close, and she was probably the most neutral out of all of them. She was the right choice.

That didn’t change the fact that Tony really, really wanted to be the one to do it. 

He didn’t want to badmouth the others, even Steve. He would try to be fair. Paint both sides of the picture. He just wanted to…

And there it was again. He just wanted to what?

“Natasha’s a good choice,” Tony agreed, and Steve sighed in relief. “When?”

“Tonight.”

Tony didn’t sleep that night. Ok, he didn’t sleep _most_ nights, but this time it wasn’t because of Afghanistan or New York or Sokovia or Germany or Siberia – and, by the way, when had _place names_ become the thing that had come back to haunt him? He was picturing Natasha telling Bruce everything. He knew she would be fair. He knew she wouldn’t make any of them look worse than they deserved.

He wanted that thing he couldn’t name. And he still didn’t sleep. 

He gave up on it around 5 am and drifted down to the hospital wing, coffee in hand, not expecting Bruce to be awake yet. To his surprise, the physicist was already sitting up in bed, staring blankly at the hospital wall.

Tony knocked, pushing the door open without waiting for an answer. “If I’d known you’d be up I would have brought you one of those disgusting leaf drinks you insist is better than this wonderful bean juice in my hand.”

Bruce didn’t reply – didn’t even acknowledge Tony was in the room with him. Concerned, Tony placed his coffee to one side and moved over to Bruce’s bed, starting to make checks, only to have Bruce bat him away.

_“Hey.”_ Tony dropped into his regular chair, the one Steve had been sitting in yesterday. “I don’t play nursemaid to a lot of people. You should feel lucky.”

“I talked to Natasha.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, dropping the joking tone. “You missed a lot here, buddy.”

Bruce didn’t reply and he still _wasn’t_ _looking at him._

“You don’t have to make a decision right away,” Tony hurried on. “It’s a lot to process. And I know from experience that dropping the Sokovia Accords in someone’s lap out of the blue and demanding they sign isn’t the best method of getting cooperation. And, look, if you don’t…” God, he was such a hypocrite for offering this, he knew that, but he just wanted Bruce to acknowledge him. “And for the record, I really think you should, but if you don’t, and you need help disappearing again then -”

“You work with Ross.”

For a second, Tony was so relieved that Bruce had finally turned his head so they were eye-to-eye, that the words didn’t hit home. “Oh, yeah. Look I know you two don’t have the best of histories -”

Bruce interrupted him with an incredulous laugh. “Yeah, that’s one way of phrasing it.”

Tony held his gaze. “Our Secretary of State brought me a legal document put together by the United Nations defending the safety of the public.”

“Right, because Thunderbolt Ross gives a damn about the safety of the public. Jesus, Tony. Every time I think you’ve learned, you go and do it all over again.”

“Do _what_ all over again?”

“Think you know best so you just dive straight in, damn the consequences. Damnit – I’ve told you about Ross, the kind of man he is. You know what he did to me. And you teamed up with him anyway?”

“I didn’t _team up_ with anyone. I was working with the government -”

“Since when do you work with the government?”

“I don’t know, Banner, since we built a murder robot that destroyed most of a small country?” A tense silence fell between them. “Sorry,” Tony muttered. “Ultron. My idea. My fault. I was trying to fix it.”

“And you thought Ross was the solution?”

“He was the Secretary of State, Bruce, what was I meant to do?”

“I don’t know, not partner up with a power-hungry sociopath?”

“I didn’t partner up -”

“Tony, just -” Bruce squeezed his eyes shut, placing his face in his hands. Tony went to put a hand on his shoulder, but Bruce dodged. “I’m not signing anything Ross had a hand in writing.”

“Everyone else has.”

“It doesn’t seem like they had much of a choice.”

Damnit, what had Natasha told him? “So you’re on Rogers’s side of this whole thing?”

“I’m not taking sides,” Bruce said quickly, taking his head out of his hands. “Switzerland over here.”

“We rewrote the Accords,” Tony pressed. “Mostly taking out the bits Ross put in in the first place.”

“But you signed the version he wanted you to? Before the Amendments?”

“Someone had to!” Tony took a deep breath, trying to keep his temper in check, willing Bruce to understand. “There had to be a peace offering, after Lagos, after the causalities in a fight I wasn’t even part of. The public and the UN needed something, someone – I gave it to them.”

“Just hoping Ross would let you change things down the line? Come on, Tony.”

“Don’t ‘Come on, Tony’ me.”

“I’m not signing,” Bruce insisted, and wow, wasn’t Tony having a sense of déjà vu. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Any more Hulk-outs are off the table.”

That was news. “What do you mean? You…you got rid of the Hulk?”

Bruce shook his head. “He got rid of me. For _eighteen months._ And I think…I think if I turn into him, Tony, I won’t turn back, ever. Not that it matters. He didn’t exactly come out to play last time we had a fight. Maybe it’s best that way anyway.”

“Hey, that green yeti has saved all of our lives, yours truly included, several times. I wouldn’t write him off just yet.”

“You don’t get it,” Bruce muttered, head back in his hands. “You never got it. You think you see the next best thing and you take it without thinking. And that’s not always a bad thing, Tony. You wouldn’t be Iron Man without that mindset. But sometimes you just take it too far and you don’t even see, or take responsibility -”

“The Accords were me taking responsibility!” Ok, Tony was officially pissed. “Seeing how dangerous all of us could be. We needed to be put in check.”

“And you decided to let Thaddeus Ross be the one to check you?”

“It was a better solution than exiling myself to space.” He regretted the words as soon as he’d said them, but it was too late. They had been said. “Bruce -”

“I think you should leave.”

“I’m sorry. That was dumb, even for my stupid mouth.”

“I’m tired.”

Tony recognized the dismissal. “Fine. Call me if you need anything, ok? You need it, you have it.”

Bruce didn’t answer as Tony stood awkwardly from the chair, and tried as best he could to leave the hospital room without bolting for the door, almost running straight into Rhodey. “Sorry,” he muttered, trying to squeeze past him. 

“Tony.”

“I’m fine, ok?”

_“Tony.”_

Rhodey caught his arm, firm and insistent, and Tony turned with an indignant quip that died on his lips when he finally took in his oldest friend for the first time.

Rhodey was standing. Rhodey was walking. Without the leg braces.

Rhodey was grinning uncontrollably as he watched Tony’s reaction. “It was Aceso. Tony you need…you have to see it for yourself. She’s a miracle.”


	2. Chapter 2

Twelve hours before it happened, The Avengers were gathered in the Compound’s common room. They were all seated around Aceso, except Rhodey, who seemed determined to never sit again, and Tony, who was trying his hardest not to pace the room and was settling for drumming his fingers over the back of a chair instead.

“So you can heal people,” Steve was saying. He was sitting closest to Aceso, who was already looking a lot better than when Tony had picked her up from Ross a week ago. There was more color in her cheeks, the well-fitted clothes making her look older than the baggy prison jumpsuit had.

Most of the story had come out. Aceso was an orphan who had fled one too many abusive foster homes and ended up on the streets. A man who had introduced himself Wolfgang Strucker had offered her a place to live and a job, not disclosing until it was too late that said place was a cell and said job was as a lab experiment.

“Didn’t we take care of Strucker?” Clint asked. His fingers had been ghosting over his ears ever since Aceso could reveal what she could do. Natasha sat next to him, quiet, one had resting above her stomach. “Like, ages ago?”

“Hill’s on it,” Steve replied, then turned back to Aceso. “And Strucker’s experiments, they gave you the ability to heal people?”

Aceso shook her head. She hadn’t looked at Tony once since he entered the room, but it didn't take much to notice that she was carefully keeping him in her periphery. Unless he was just being paranoid. “It’s not healing, so much as it is reversing.” She gestured to Rhodey. “I didn’t heal Colonel Rhodes’s spinal fracture. I returned his body to the state it was before it occurred.”

“Does that mean I’m seven months younger?” Rhodey asked, and Tony made a small noise in his throat that had everyone looking at him. “Got something to say, Tones?

Tony met his gaze. “Just sounds like the kind of question  you should have asked before you let a stranger experiment on you. _What?”_ he pressed, when the whole room turned to stare at him. “That’s a fair question.”

“I was asked for a demonstration of my abilities,” Aceso said, still calm. “I gave one. And no,” she said to Rhodey. “You aren’t younger. De-aging isn’t a skill set I have.”

“Damn,” Rhodey said. “But look, I’m not complaining that I’m...reversed.”

Tony caught Steve ducking his head, guilt flashing across his face, so Sam leaned forward and took over. “So if one of us gets injured on the battlefield, or anywhere -”

“I could reverse it,” Aceso confirmed, then looked at Tony as she said, “No side effects.”

Natasha spoke up for the first time, moving her hand off her stomach as though not realizing she had placed it there. “What did you do for Strucker?”

“I reversed his failed experiments,” Aceso said in a small voice. “That way he could use fewer test subjects. If they failed, I could bring them back. And he could start all over again.”

A hush fell over the room, which Clint broke. “Well, then. I vote we go arrest this bastard all over again, who’s in?”

“That’s for Hill to decide,” Steve said. “But I’ll be right behind you when she approves. Her and the UN,” he added quickly, with a look at Tony. 

“That could take weeks,” Clint argued. “If he has more test subjects, we need to get to them now.”

Rhodey swooped in to stop the argument before it could happen. “We’ll fast track it. We’ve been on our best behavior for months and Strucker is a Class A criminal. The mission will be approved in no time.”

“It’ll pull resources away from Gargan,” Natasha pointed out, hand adjusting the hair scarf tied around the back of her head. She made it look like a fashionable accessory, but they all knew that it was hiding the chunk of missing hair and barely healed over scabs at the back of her head. 

The conversation went on like that for some time, ending on the consensus that Steve would speak to Hill and Tony would take the case to Ross. They dispersed, but Tony intercepted Rhodey before he could leave, pulling him to one side. “You ok, Tones?”

“We’re running tests.”

Rhodey raised an eyebrow at him. “On what?”

“What do you mean, ‘on what?’ On _you,_ honeybear.”

It was a testament to their long-running friendship that Rhodey just sighed and agreed. “I’m fine. But if it will make you feel better -”

“It’s not about me feeling better, it’s about making sure that there really aren’t any side effects.”

“Ok. We’ll test. Just to be safe. Alright?”

“Don’t humor me. She was one of Strucker’s, and the last enhanced we adopted from him was Wanda Maximoff.”

Some of the goodwill in Rhodey’s stature faded. “Tony -”

“And before your mind goes where I know it’s going, I’m aware she ended up on our side playing hero. But that was only after  her and the brother did a whole lot of damage.”

“Pietro.”

“What?”

“Her brother. His name was Pietro, and he’s the only reason Clint wasn’t among the Sokovia body count.”

“Yes,” Tony bit back. “Sokovia. Which happened because I wasn’t cautious. Because I didn’t think of every side effect, every path Ultron could go down.”

“I already agreed to do the tests.”

“Ok. Let’s go do them.”

Rhodey laughed. _“Now?”_

“What, you want to wait to see if you sprout a third leg? Yes, now.”

“I need to talk to -”

“Then talk to them from my lab. We’ll multitask. I just don’t think we should trust - _shit!_ ” He broke off as he saw a pair of storm gray eyes staring him down, Aceso having not moved from her chair, having heard every word. Tony smiled, trying to cover. “I feel like now is a good time to inform you that I have a heart condition, and the assassin twins test it enough as it is.”

Rhodey whirled around as well, seeing that Aceso hadn’t left the room with the others. Aceso stood, calm. “Would you like to do tests on me too?”

“No,” Rhodey assured her at the same time as Tony said, “Do we need to?”

Aceso met his gaze. “I don’t know. Do you?”

“Ok.” Rhodey stepped between them, talking to Aceso first. “No more tests. You’re not an experiment, ok? You’re our guest.” To Tony he said, “I get that you’re looking out for me, and if it’ll put your mind at ease, I’ll come by the lab first thing tomorrow morning. Maybe we can make some use of our resident physicist being back in…well, residence.”

Tony exhaled. He hadn’t spoken to Bruce since the argument in the hospital room, but he supposed he had to at some point. He couldn’t hide him from Ross forever.  


”Can I go?” Aceso asked, tone still the epitome of politeness.

”You don’t need our permission,” Rhodey assured her.   


She nodded, eyes not leaving Tony as she left the room, like that wasn’t creepy at all. “Lab,” Tony ordered Rhodey. “Now. I can get by without Bruce.”

”I already said first thing tomorrow I’ll -”

 _“Now_ ,” Tony insisted. He couldn’t put his finger on why, but he figured if he had Peter's spidey-sense, it would feel something like this. "Please just...let me check."

Rhodey softened. "Ok. We'll run some tests. But I promise you, I'm fine - better than fine. And I still don't regret my choices," he added quickly. "Signing the Accords - right thing to do. But this..." He gestured to his legs. "This was a bad beat. I'm not sorry to have that undone."

"I know," Tony replied quickly. "And I'm not trying to take that away from you, ok? I just..." He glanced towards the door where Aceso had left.

"Tones?"

"I just want to be sure."

***

Seven hours before it happened, after every test Tony could think of had been completed, he was beginning to think that there was the slight possibility that he had overreacted.

He hadn’t seen Rhodey this upbeat in months. For all of Rhodey’s words about truly being fine about his injury from Germany, that he would make the same choices in a heartbeat even knowing what was waiting for him, it was like a huge weight had been lifted off the Colonel’s shoulders. After seeing no more reasons to keep Rhodey in the lab, Tony had nothing left to distract him from the fact that he needed to call Ross. And before that, he needed to talk to Bruce.

When he didn't find the physicist in his hospital room, Tony went searching the Compound instead. His path took him into the gym where Rhodey  and Clint were sparring. Rhodey was grinning from ear-to-ear even as Clint wiped the floor with him.

“I’m just out of practice,” Rhodey panted, as Clint helped him to his feet. “Give me a few more weeks and I’m going to be knocking you flat on your ass, Barton.”

Rhodey went to shower as Clint swung out of the sparring ring, heading for the weights instead. “Did you want something, Stark?”

Tony fought the urge to roll his eyes. It had been ‘Stark’ even since Clint had been confined to the Compound post-Accords, and the archer had made it clear that wasn’t changing any time soon. Never mind that Clint had been the one to break the law. Never mind that it was Tony who had spent days bargaining and debating with Ross and the UN to get the rogues out of the Raft, and then months in paperwork and court hearings to lift the house arrest. 

Tony knew that people got to screw Clint Barton over a grand total of once. And as far as Clint was concerned, Tony had screwed him over. 

Tony watched Clint grab a drink bottle and towel from the side of the ring, waiting on an answer. Tony waited for the quip about perving on Avengers in the gym, or something equally dirty like Clint would have once done. Now, he just waited, clearly wanting Tony to leave.

Tony’s eyes tracked up to Clint’s ears, now devoid of their aids. “You too, huh?”

Clint shrugged. “I figured, why not? One less thing to worry about on missions.”

“I guess.” 

Clint raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re saying that if Aceso hadn’t appeared a few years ago you wouldn’t have had her take out your arc reactor and fix up that big hole in your chest?”

“I did that myself. With lots of research. And tests. And safety measures.”

“Right, because you always think through every single decision before you decide it’s the best one for everyone, right?”

Tony left soon after that. 

***

Six hours before it happened, Tony walked in on Steve and Bruce having an argument.

Well, as close to an argument as two of the most polite people he knew could get. Tony was on his way to Bruce’s quarters when he heard low voices coming from the smaller of the communal kitchens on the shared floor. Usually he’d swerve at this point, avoiding whatever awkward company was awaiting him at his previous destination. Then he heard Bruce's voice. “No, I’m not telling Tony, and that’s not your decision to make.”

“Not tell me what?” On any other occasion, Tony would have congratulated himself on the startled looks he got from the two men as he sauntered into the kitchen, heading straight for the coffee machine, faking casual. He put a pot onto to brew, giving them each a moment to compose themselves before he turned with a raised eyebrow.

Bruce at least had the decency to look somewhat guilty, which is when Tony noticed the packed bag at his feet. “Got a holiday planned, Banner?”

“This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you.”

Tony took a step forward, pushing off the kitchen bench. “What, so you were going to, I don’t know, ghost me? You just got back!”

“I left a note. I thought it would be easier.”

“Easier for _whom?”_

“Ok.” Steve stood, palms flat in a placating gesture. “Nothing’s been decided yet -”

“Yes, it has.” Bruce stood too, taking a breath, then turning to Tony. “Tony, listen. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me - both in the past week, and since 2012, I really do. But you need to understand that I can’t have Ross knowing I’m back.”

“We’ll defend you if he tries anything,” Steve said, and for once, Tony was in total agreement with  the supersoldier. “He can’t touch you here.”

“Is that why Barnes is still in Wakanda?” Bruce winced when he saw the effect of the words on Steve, and hastily retracted. “Sorry. I’m really not trying to cause trouble. That’s why I think it’s best that I just go.”

“Where?” Tony demanded. “Where on earth could you go that’s safer than here? Or, _not_ on earth? ”

Bruce gave him a sad smile. “No more space for me, I’ll tell you that much.”

“You’re not even going to tell me where you’re going?”

"No. It's safer that way, for all of you. Gives you plausible deniability."

"So you're just going to be on the run forever? Is that the plan?"

“Tony, for once, _listen._ If Ross finds out I’m back, Hulk or not, he’s coming for me.”

“I’ll stop him.”

“So will I,” Steve added.

“And that’s why I’m leaving,” Bruce insisted. “I meant it when I said that I didn’t want to cause trouble. Look, finally coming back to earth to find this…it’s a mess, ok? It doesn't matter why or whose fault it is. I can see you’re all doing the best you can, and you don’t need more complications while you sort out…whatever this is. Ok?”

Tony wasn’t ready to give up the fight, but something else Bruce had said was nagging at him. “What did you mean - Hulk or not?”

Steve frowned. “What?”

Tony didn’t take his eyes off Bruce. “What did you mean?”

Bruce sighed. “I thought, with the way you reacted with Rhodey, maybe it would be better if you didn’t know that either.”

“That’s not a sentiment I’m fond of,” Tony snapped, seeing Steve flinch. Good. Then the full weight of the statement hit home. “You’re not…Bruce, you didn’t.”

Steve caught on a second later. “You went to Aceso.”

“Why?” Tony demanded, running a hand through his hair. “Why would you do that?”

Bruce stared at him. “What do you mean, why would I do that? Why would I _not_ do that? It’s everything I’ve been working towards, for _years.”_

“Tony -” Steve warned, but Tony was done listening.

“We have no idea who this girl is."

"You found nothing wrong with Rhodey."

"That's not the point. She's a stranger, and you let her experiment on -"

“It wasn't an experiment,” Bruce insisted. “The Other Guy was an experiment. One that went horribly wrong and ruined my life and now she’s fixed that. And she's not a stranger, not really. She's a victim of Ross as well. You know he had her on the Raft, right?"

“Ok,” Steve broke into the brewing argument. “So Hulk is…gone.” Steve seemed to be having trouble swallowing the information, but appeared to be taking it better than Tony was. “So the Accords no longer apply to you, right? You're not classified as enhanced, so you don’t have to sign them, and Ross can't make you. You don’t have to run."

“You don’t get it.” Bruce was shaking his head. “Doesn’t matter if the Other Guy is around or not. Ross will still come after me, for ‘past crimes’ or however he wants to phase it. He'll come, and he'll go through who he needs to do it."

“He won't get through us,” Tony insisted. "We'll fight for you." He felt Steve’s eyes on him then, but ignored him. “How are you not getting that?”

“How are _you_ not getting it?” Bruce sighed as he picked up his bag, slinging it over his shoulder. “This is my choice, ok? Please, just let me have this. This is what I want.”

“Well, if it’s what you _want_.” The coffee pot dinged, and Tony turned to pour himself a mug, glad for a reason to break eye contact. “If being the Other Guy and on the team was really _ruining your life_ , then I’m happy for you, and whatever you want to do next. You know the way out, right?”

Then he took his coffee and left, not looking back.

***

One hour before it happened, Natasha found him.

He wasn’t even surprised. He was where he always was when he didn’t want to think about the team or the Accords or anything outside blaring music and the feeling of gadgets in his hands. Technology he understood. Technology he could control.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. turned off his music abruptly as Natasha let herself in through the workshop door. Natasha had the uncanny ability of sneaking up on him, and this was his AI's way of letting him know she was coming. At least someone was on his side.

Natasha didn’t stop until she was sitting right beside him, going so far as to pull his hands away from the Widow Bite replacement he was constructing, then tugging his glasses off as well. “Hey,” he protested. “Personal space.”

“I’m here to talk.”

Tony didn’t bother to hide his groan. Here it was, the whole 'Tony-you’re-being-an-asshole-knock-it-off' speech.

“Why didn’t you want Bruce to do it?”

“He told you.”

“He did. When he came to say goodbye.”

Tony shrugged, trying to hide his hurt that Natasha had warranted a goodbye and not him. “It’s not that I didn’t want him to do it. He’s wanted this for so long.”

“But?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m waiting.”

“For what?” 

“The 'Tony-I’m-not-angry-I’m-just-disappointed talk'. What, was Rogers not available?”

Natasha’s expression didn’t shift. “I’m not here for that.”

“Then what? I’m busy.”

He reached for his work again but Natasha was quicker, catching his hands and holding them in her own. It was a gesture he wouldn’t allow from anyone else in a million years, but the touch was soft, not restraining. “I need to know why. You have good instincts about people.”

Tony ducked his head. “An old friend named Obadiah Stane might disagree with you there.”

“I mean it. Tell me why you didn’t want Bruce to do this.”

“Just…” Tony took his hands back, Natasha letting them slide out of her grip. “This woman shows up out of nowhere with powers we don’t understand. And, ok, I know we live in that kind of world now, but are we really not going to check before we let her operate on us?” He rubbed his chest where the arc reactor used to be. “I know I don’t have the best history of thinking things through, but…I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it.”

Natasha nodded slowly. “Your gut.”

“Yeah, I guess. But that’s been wrong about a lot of things lately, so.” Tony shrugged. “On paper, it’s for the best, I know that. I’m happy for Bruce, of course I am, not to mention Rhodey, but…” He caught on. “You’re going to ask her to do something to you, aren’t you? Reverse something.”

Natasha sighed. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “When I was young, still in the Red Room, a choice got taken away from me. It’s a choice I’d like to have back.”

She didn’t elaborate and Tony knew better than to push. “Are you getting weird vibes from her too?”

“Maybe. Like you said, on paper, it all looks perfect. Too good to be true, even.”

“Maybe we’ve just been dealt so many bad hands lately we just can’t appreciate a good thing when we see it.”

“That’s probably true,” Natasha agreed. “But I trust you, Tony. You should too.”

She didn’t elaborate, leaving Tony even more confused than before as she left his workshop. 

***

Five minutes before it happened, Tony was still staring at the unfinished Widow Bite. Who was he to say otherwise if Rhodey wanted to walk again, or Clint wanted to rid himself of the threat of losing or breaking his hearing aids on a mission, or Bruce never wanted to worry about the Other Guy again?

But try as he might, Tony couldn’t shake that feeling that something was _off._ Things just didn’t happen this easily. Avengers didn’t just get handed magical solutions. Their problems didn’t get to just be fixed with a snap of their fingers. 

A gentle knock at the door had Tony’s face flying out of his hands, quickly running through the list of the Compound residents who actually knocked to announce their presence. It was a shortlist, and the person hovering outside the door wasn’t even close to it.

Confused, Tony waved Aceso in. “Um, hi. Are you lost?”

She smiled at him. “No. I meant to come here.”

“Ok.” Tony frowned, trying to stay polite even as suddenly felt cornered. “I meant what I said about you having free reign of the Compound, but the workshop is off-limits. Workplace health and safety, and all that."

Aceso’s smile didn’t falter as she took another step into the lab. “I think I’ll be alright.”

Ok, yep, something was definitely wrong. Her tone was too confident, posture ready for a fight despite her tiny frame.  He turned around so his hand was on the Bite, trying to keep the gesture casual. “Can I help you with something?”

Her smile brightened. “Actually, yes. You can actually help us rather a lot.”

Even before the ‘us’ tipped him off, Tony was slipping Bite onto his hand, ready to call out to F.R.I.D.A.Y. to send back-up.

He didn’t get a chance to do either. A moment later, all the lights in the workshop blinked off at once. His last thought as a strong pair of arms appeared out of nowhere to lock his elbows behind his back and clap a hand over his mouth was _I can’t wait to say ‘I told you so.’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading essentially two chapters of set-up for the whump I promised you. That's next chapter. Then all the whump at once.
> 
> While you're waiting for chapter 3, I do recommend reading [Man in a Can](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26494669/chapters/64568395) as the next chapter references that one quite a bit. 
> 
> Anxiety is telling me to tell you that I love all our characters and that there is rather a lot of information that Tony doesn’t have.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, the whump you've been waiting for. As always please head tags and warnings.

When Tony woke he was still in his workshop, which was an upside. The downside was that he couldn’t move a muscle.

He could hear movement around him, the sounds of low voices, and tried to orientate himself. He was lying on one of his workbenches. He tested each limb, feeling for movement and finding none. For a horrifying moment, he felt Obadiah learning over him, reaching into his chest and yanking out the arc reactor and -

No. Nope. No spiraling allowed. He forced a breath, then a second one, feeling nauseous and willing himself not to throw up, which would _not_ be fun in his current position. Had they drugged him?

He could feel his muscles trying to move at least, which meant he was restrained, not paralyzed, even if it was in the strangest restraints he’d ever been bound up in. He could feel them _under_ him, locking down his limbs, torso, and head, but nothing _over_ him. 

“He’s awake.”

The voice was low, male, unfamiliar. More than one, if Aceso was still around. More than one, and he couldn’t move to defend himself. That said, he wasn’t dead, and they didn’t take him anywhere. He was in his workshop, in the Compound, with the Avengers, whether they were talking to him or not.

Except they weren’t talking to him - not really, anyway. He’d been excluding himself from their social gatherings for months now, choosing to spend the time alone in his workshop instead. They weren’t going to notice anything was out of the ordinary if he didn’t show up for a few hours.

No one was going to come. 

“F.R.I.D.A.Y?” he croaked, not particularly surprised when he didn’t get an answer, but heart still sinking when he realized that his A.I. wouldn’t be sending out an alarm any time soon. And his workshop wasn’t completely soundproof, but it was close to it, and if no one was nearby - 

“Melinoe, free his head. Let him see us.”

Tony forced himself not to flinch as hands came down on either side of him, the metal trapping his head growing soft. That sensation came with a surge of panic - were they _heating_ it?Tony had suffered plenty of burns in his time as a mechanic, and they hurt like a mother and definitely did not belong anywhere near his face. Then his body caught up to his brain, assuring him that the metal was cool and he jerked his head forward, feeling the metal solidify again beneath him.

When he looked down at himself, he didn’t see restraints. He was _in_ the table, half-submerged in the metal worktop.

Claustrophobia threatened to consume him but he forced it back, focussing instead on his captors. Aceso was at his main workbench, poised at the edge of a stool, those storm gray eyes fixed on him. A rotund man stood next to her, arms crossed, a black mask blocking out of most of his face. Movement behind him, and then a second woman came into view, taller and broader than Aceso and also masked, who Tony assumed was the one she had called Melinoe.

“I have to say, of all the “let’s kidnap Tony Stark” plans, of which there have been many,” Tony said, forcing the panic caused by the confined space out of his voice. “This is probably in the top five dumbest.”

“Shut up,” Aceso warned him, her voice all calm waters.

Tony ignored her. “You didn’t even move me out of the Compound _._ Look, I know the Avengers are doing an excellent Fleetwood Mac impression these days, but we’re not _that_ broken.” He was bluffing. No one was going to check on him down here. Maybe Rhodey, come morning, but that was hours away.

“Shut up,” Aceso repeated, not raising her voice. “Or I’ll have Melinoe trap your mouth like she did to your intern.”

Any bit of cockiness Tony was faking was replaced by pure anger. He glared at her. “ _You_. You put Peter in my floor.”

Aceso shrugged. “Technically, Melinoe did. Show him.”

Melinoe picked up the Widow Bite Tony had been working on, and he watched with narrowed eyes as it turned to liquid, gas, then back into a solid weapon again. “Congratulations,” Tony said dryly. “You can do elementary school science.”

She stepped back, almost shyly, shifting behind the large man, so Tony turned his gaze to him. “And let me guess, you have some fun little trick that can get past F.R.I.D.A.Y?”

Aceso’s lips twitched. “We’re not giving away all our secrets just yet. Janus?”

The man - Janus - snapped his fingers. Nothing happened, and Tony felt a new frustration at being restrained that he couldn’t start a slow clap. Aceso seemed satisfied though, because she dropped off the chair onto her feet. Tony wasn’t sure how a woman who was 5 foot 3 and couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds was puling off Natasha Romanoff levels of intimidation, but Aceso was managing as she crossed the room to stand over him, scooping up a pair of scissors on her way.

Tony met her gaze, refusing to show fear as she twirled the scissors in her hands, the blades catching the workshop lights. “Get me out of this table, and I might go easy on you later. You do know who you have here, right?”

“We’ll let you go,” she replied smoothly. “As soon as you give us what we want. We thought your intern’s safety would be enough to convince you, but apparently you only care about yourself, so…”

Tony would have liked to think he wouldn’t have flinched anyway, but the workbench kept him firmly in place as the scissors descended towards his torso. Cold steel grazed his stomach, but the metal didn’t cut skin. Aceso methodically sliced away his shirt, as Tony ducked a look around her to the workshop door, making a show of it. “You sure you want to be walked in on while undressing Tony Stark? The tabloids don’t make that fun a position to be in.”

She continued stripping away his shirt, all business. “I’ve been watching you this past week. All of you.” She didn’t even spare him a look as she said, “You spend your nights here alone. No one comes to check on you.”

Damn. So much for that bluff. He changed tactics. “You turned off F.R.I.D.A.Y. She won’t stay off forever.”

Aceso pulled away the last of his shirt, the last statement not seeming to bother her. “I’ve thought this through, Stark.” She finally looked at him. “I’ve had a long time to think about it. A long time to think about a lot of things.”

Tony was trying very hard not to look at the scissors, but Aceso just handed them to Janus. The huge man ran a very unwelcome hand down Tony’s leg, pausing on his ankle, and Tony couldn’t jerk it away. “Can’t hang up on me like this, can you?”

It took Tony a moment to wrap his head around the words before he cottoned on. “You,” he spat at Janus. “You were the voice on the phone.” The voice that told him that they were going let Peter starve to death, to _rot,_ if Tony didn’t give them what they asked for. “You want access to my server.”

“Correct,” Aceso confirmed.

“You’re not getting it.”

“Incorrect.”

“You’ve been here a week,” Tony shot back at her, playing for time. “Why now?”

“I needed to know,” she said. “About your team. I wanted to see if they were different.” Aceso’s hand pressed against Tony’s forehead, forcing him back against the workbench. “And they’re not. You’re all the same. Buried so far in your bureaucracy and your petty infighting that you don’t see anyone else, let alone care.”

Tony gave her a winning smile as she leaned over him. “You know, I’m pretty sure there’s a name for this kink, somewhere. It’s not something I’m into but hey, I’m the last person who should judge.”

Aceso’s other hand slammed against Tony’s chest, making him wince. Her skin on his was ice. “You asked if I knew who I had here. The answer is yes. I know exactly who you are, Stark. And I know what people like _you_ do to people like _me._ ”

Tony opened his mouth to ask what exactly the hell she meant by that, but broke off when a sharp stab of pain echoed up his chest. He winced, then bit his lip as he felt several more stabs after the first, pulling back memories of heat and sand and gunfire.

He _knew_ this pain.

He gritted his teeth. “I’m not giving you access to my server. I don’t care what the hell your little party tricks are, there’s no _way_ -”

He broke off with a shout as the pain progressed, from shrapnel damage straight into -

No. No no no. Not this. Anything but this. Not again. He’d take the damn waterboarding again, tenfold, over this.

Aceso paused, one hand lingering on his chest, and Tony didn’t even realize he’d squeezed his eyes tight shut until she said, “Look at me.”

He did, trying not to channel anger and not fear. He remembered that she had been part of the scheme to bury Peter alive. That worked.

“I told you that I didn’t heal,” Aceso said, her voice low and soft. “I _reverse._ I can put the body back into any state that it’s been in, ever. Do you understand?”

Tony’s eyes darted from Janus, who he could tell was grinning even behind the mask, to Melinoe, shifting nervously from foot to foot in the corner, then back to Aceso’s clinical gaze. He couldn’t give them access to the server, not with information on every weapon the Avengers had ever used on it. Not with everything with Barnes on it either. Including, and he knew this, he knew it and he still hadn’t deleted it, enough information to probably make another Winter Soldier.

Aceso leaned forward, placing more pressure on his chest. “In case you don’t understand, let me be clear. You’re going to give me access to your server, in return for me not doing this a second time.”

_Second time?_ Tony opened his mouth to protest, but a howl was ripped out of it instead as he felt his body start morphing through his arc reactor surgery from Afghanistan.

The first time, the original surgery that Aceso was now reenacting, had been the worse pain of Tony’s life, and he’d barely been conscious. That wasn’t the case now. Every time he tipped towards blackness Aceso wrenched him right back. He felt every bit of it, every ounce of skin and muscle and bone that was being scraped out of his sternum.

At one point Aceso leaned down to whisper in his ear. He was screaming too loudly to hear what she said.

He felt the final piece being carved out and knew what happened next, but he could do nothing to stop her as she pushed his body through the process of cauterizing the hole between his lungs.

The world was white by the time she’d finished. Nothing else existed but the agony ripping through his body.

Nothing but a voice that was echoing through the workshop door. “Aceso, stop! Let’s talk about this, ok?”

He was imagining it. It was because he’d been thinking of him earlier. He wasn't actually here.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y., open the door! Call the others!”

The Irish voice didn’t respond.

“Aceso,” someone said, quiet and soft. Melinoe. “Don’t let him get anyone else down here.”

The hand on Tony’s forehead shoved his head sideways, towards the workshop door. And there, watching him with an agonized expression through the glass, was Bruce Banner.

Aceso’s hand fisted in his hair, keeping his head steady, her next words aimed at Bruce. “Call anyone else and I’ll hurt him worse.”

Tony would have summoned a laugh if his throat didn’t feel like it was made of shattered glass. How the hell could he be any more hurt than this?

Bruce’s eyes found his, wide and horrified and desperate. “You need him,” he stated, even as he tried to scan his hand against the locked door, still unable to get in. “You can’t get what you want if he’s dead. I can stop that - let me see him.”

Dead? No, Tony wasn’t dying. He was very, very much living. Alive with a gaping hole in his chest.

Aceso stood her ground. “If I wanted him dead he’d be dead.” She twisted her hand tighter in Tony’s hair. “And he’s not dying until he’s helped me fix it.”

Tony’s brain didn’t have the capacity to try and dissect that. It didn’t seem to have the capacity to do anything beyond communicate _pain pain pain._

“Yeah? And were you going to stop him from going into shock? Have you even noticed he’s in shock?”

Shock. Yeah. That tracked.

“Aceso.” Melinoe stepped forward, wringing her hands. “We won’t get the server if he dies.”

“Then I’ll just reverse the shock.” Tony tried to flinch away as Aceso reached for him, but she was interrupted by Bruce slamming his first into the glass door again.

“Reversing the shock and not the surgery will kill him. Look, I’m a doctor and I’m not…I’m not a threat anymore, am I? Why don’t you let me in and maybe we can all still get what we want.”

Not a threat. Because Bruce wasn’t the Hulk anymore. He was just human.

“No.” Tony tried to struggle out of Aceso’s grip, but she held on. “Banner, don’t you dare come in here!”

Aceso nodded to Janus, who snapped his fingers again, and the door to the workshop flew open just long enough for Bruce to scramble inside, coming immediately to Tony’s side, eyes going huge when they surveyed the arc reactor-sized crater in his chest. “I need him out of the table.”

Aceso’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t try to pull anything. It won’t work.”

“I need his legs elevated and I need to get him warm,” Bruce insisted. “I can’t do that when he’s…how did you even do this?”

Aceso still looked wary, but she finally released Tony’s hair before crossing to the room and examining a tray of weapons Tony had been fixing up for Natasha after the disastrous Gargan mission. She selected one of the more basic guns, checking it was loaded. “Fine. Melinoe? Let him out.”

The masked girl crossed to the table and Tony felt the strange melting sensation surround him before familiar arms were underneath his chest and legs, lifting him. Bruce didn’t have the strength to carry him for more than a few seconds, hastily lowering them both to the floor. He slid his legs under Tony’s, looking around for an ally and settling on Melinoe. “I need blankets. There should be an emergency kit under the workbench nearest the door.”

“Not…” Tony swallowed, trying to stop his voice from shaking. “Not in shock.”

“Who’s the doctor here?”

“Not you, as you’ve told me on multiple occasions.”

“Enough.” Aceso stepped forward, shooting a look at Melinoe, who stopped dead in her tracks. “Don’t give them anything.”

“He needs it,” Bruce insisted.

“Not in shock,” Tony protested. “Still….still hurts.” Wasn’t shock meant to take the pain _away?_

“The shock will be reducing the pain quite a bit, but it’s not going to take away all of it, not with an injury like this.”

A bubble of laughter escaped Tony’s lips. This was _reduced?_ He raised a hand to hit Bruce weakly in the chest. “Idiot.”

“Sure.”

“ _Idiot_ ,” Tony insisted. “You’re not…she took away…you shouldn’t be here.”

“What, was I just meant to let her operate on you like that?”

“Not…not safe.”

“I’m not the one we’re worrying about right now.”

They were interrupted by a crash. Janus was in the far corner of Tony’s workshop, having apparently just knocked over something. He shot Aceso a guilty look before beginning to scoop everything up, but not before something he had touched rolled across the floor, landing beside Aceso’s feet. She picked it up, and Bruce saw the arc reactor encased in the glass. Aceso’s expression went hard as she read the text inscribed there. “Proof that Tony Stark has a heart.” She snorted, disbelieving. “You really have them all fooled, don’t you?”

“I need the blanket,” Bruce insisted. “Or for you to reverse the shock _and_ the surgery, together. Then we can negotiate, ok?”

Aceso finally pulled her attention to Bruce, eyeing him. “Bruce Banner.”

Bruce’s hand fumbled, finding Tony’s. “Aceso, heal him, _please…_ ”

“I thought you at least would understand,” Aceso murmured, turning the arc reactor over in her hands. “You suffered under Ross. He hunted you. Tried to imprison you. Just like he did to me - to _all of us._ ”

Tony felt Bruce grow still. “Yes,” Bruce said finally. “But whatever you’re planning to get back at him, it doesn’t justify what you’re doing now.”

Her expression didn’t change, still projecting that strange calmness as her features began to shift. The pale skin on the left side of her face turned a dark purple as her hair started retreating into her head, nose flattening as though it had been broken. One eye squeezed shut, turning black and puffy. “And what about now?” Her tone hadn’t changed, even as Tony stared in horror at what was clearly the results of a savage beating. More than one. Her attention went back to Tony. “This is what they do to us on the Raft, Stark, under the Accords _you_ support, that gives Ross permission to do whatever he wants to people like me.” She turned her gaze to Bruce, morphing back into her usual self. “To people like you.”

“No.” Tony struggled to sit upright, but it was too much and he collapsed, gasping, clutching Bruce’s hand. “Not the Accords…I read…checked…”

“Don’t matter if the words are there or not,” Aceso said, her tone steel. “The intentions are. And there are enough people in the world like Ross to make that enough.”

“Strucker,” Tony got out. “That whole story. None of that was true, was it?”

Aceso shrugged. “Some. I was one of his. Most of us were.” She gestured to Janus and Melinoe. “But a long time ago. I don’t know where he is now, but I hope he’s dead, or wishing he was. I’ve been biding my time.” She stared Tony down. “On the Raft. For _five years.”_ She let those words hang heavy in the air. “And Ross only let me go because I gave him the names of my friends, ones he considered more dangerous than me. But it was worth it, to get to come here”

“I’m sorry,” Tony managed. “I didn’t…none of us knew.”

“You didn’t think to check though, did you? You got all your friends out, sure. You didn’t think twice about the rest of us.” Aceso stared down at the arc reactor in her hand before she tossed it to Melinoe, who almost fumbled the catch. “Take that out.”

The glass around the reactor turned to a light mist as Melinoe extracted the reactor from its stand, throwing it back to Aceso. She caught it one-handed, still clutching Natasha’s gun.

“We’ll stop him,” Tony promised, fighting to stay conscious. As much as he wanted to just blackout from the pain, he didn’t want to leave Bruce alone with them. “Ross. Now we know what he’s doing. We’ll stop him.”

Aceso fixed him with a look. “No. You won’t. You’ll attend meetings and court hearings and throw about your money and your fancy words, and at the end of the day you’ll return to your luxury housing and forget about us. I don’t need words, Stark, spoken or on paper. I need action. And for that I need access to your server.”

Tony felt Bruce’s arms tighten protectively around him as Aceso made her way over to them. Every bit of wild panic made itself known again as Tony curled into Bruce before he could stop himself. She was going to do it again. She was going to fill the gaping hole in his chest only to tear it all out _again_.

“Listen,” Bruce pleaded with her. “Whatever plan you have for the information on there, whatever you think you can do to Ross, we can find a better way.”

“Access to the server or a second round of surgery,” Aceso stated, stopping a step away from both of them, tucking Natasha’s gun into her waistband so she had a hand free.

Tony couldn’t go through that again. There was no way. He’d been through torture before, survived torture before but…but he couldn’t give her what was on the server either.

“I can’t,” Tony whispered, not sure which of Aceso’s options he was really talking about. “Bruce, I…I _can’t_.”

He felt Bruce grow very still. “Ok,” he said softly, almost under his breath, as though agreeing to something Tony had asked him for, then looking back up at Aceso. “You do this to him again you’ll kill him.”

“If his body gets near death I’ll reverse it,” she said simply. 

“How can you be sure you’ll reverse it in time?” Bruce argued. “You only get one chance of that and if you mess it up, it’s over. You can reverse the body, sure, but the mind can only take so much before it breaks. You really want to risk that?

Aceso pursed her lips, considering. Janus chimed in. “Rip him apart, Ces. You know he deserves it.”

“Listen,” Bruce pressed, ignoring Janus. “I know more than anyone what it’s like to have your life ruined by Thaddeus Ross. And I know you think you’re doing the right thing, that you’re protecting your friends.” Bruce paused, as though choosing his next words very carefully. “But Tony is _my_ friend. Ok?”

Aceso considered, gazing down the arc reactor still clutched in her hand, running her thumb over the word ‘heart’. “Ok,” she agreed, and no, it wasn’t that simple, there was no way she would just give up and -

The gunshot echoed around the workshop and Tony braced himself, waiting for the added pain. It didn’t come. Instead, Bruce’s arms slid away from around him, followed by a thud as a body hit the floor.

Tony scurried to his knees, a brief surge of adrenaline overwhelming the pain, and saw Bruce leaning over, blood spilling over his hands, which were pressed over his stomach.

Tony swore, reaching to help, but a hand fisted in his collar and dragged him backward, and for such a tiny woman Aceso was _strong_ , throwing him up against a workbench leg so hard it made him yelp. “Fix him,” Tony ordered her, trying and failing to keep the shake out of his voice. “Or reverse it, whatever. You want to hurt someone - hurt me.”

Aceso cocked her head to one side. “Interesting. Maybe there is a heart in there after all.”

“ _Reverse it_ ,” Tony insisted, trying to peer around her. Bruce was bent over, gasping, trying to keep pressure on the wound. “He hates Ross every bit as much as you do. He’s not like me.”

“Although,” Aceso continued. "If you had a heart, I think we’d both know it would be a metal one. After all, Stark men are made of iron, right?” Then, without warning, she shoved the arc reactor into the cavity in Tony’s chest.

He screamed as the metal brushed against the cauterized sides of the wound, with no reactor walls to protect him from the blow. “Get it out,” he gasped, before he could stop himself. “Get…don’t. Out. _Out.”_

“Give me access to your server,” she pressed. “Then I’ll fix you.” She pointed at Bruce. “And him.”

Tony’s eyes found Bruce’s. The physicist was panting with pain, but the look he met Tony with was steady. “Don’t do it.”

“Bruce…”

_“Don’t._ ” And then, with a move so slight Tony was half-sure he imagined it, Bruce glanced up at the vents.

Aceso’s response was to lift the gun a second time and shoot Bruce in the shoulder. “Server, Stark. _Now.”_

Tony clenched his fists. Why hadn’t he just wiped the damn thing after the incident with Peter?

Melinoe stepped forward, still tentative. “This wasn’t part of the plan. You said you were only going to hurt Stark.”

“The plan was to get to the server,” Aceso replied, as calm as ever. “I’m doing that.”

A _thud_ indicated that Bruce had hit the floor, a pool of blood spreading across the tiles. “Ok!” Tony still had no intention of letting her get anywhere near that information, but anything to buy a little time while he thought of a way to get them both out of this. “Reverse the gunshots. Then I’ll open the server, you can take what you want.”

Aceso nodded to Janus, who hauled Tony to his feet, manhandling him across the room to his main work station. Aceso went to sit beside Bruce, placing a gentle hand on his forehead. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, sounding like she meant it. “I thought we’d be on the same side. Maybe we would be, if you knew everything we were doing. The _good_ we’re doing. We're going to make the world safe for all the people like us. We'll finally be safe." 

Bruce met her gaze. “You buried a teenager alive,” he accused her, the words hitching. “And now you’re torturing people. All because you think you know what’s best and want everyone to fall in line behind you. Tell me, how are you better than Ross right now?”

Her face went cold, the closest Tony had seen her to outright anger, and she fixed her gaze on Tony instead. “Server, or he bleeds out. What it's going to be?” Then she readied the gun and fired it point-blank into Bruce’s kneecap.

The deafening scream of pain that followed was enough to break the last of Tony’s resolve. “Ok!” Tony raised his hands as far as he could, wincing as he did so. “Stop. I’ll open the server. Just…just stop.”

Janus let him slump onto the stool, Tony’s hands ghosting over the arc reactor. He could pull it out, but he was pretty sure he’d pass out pretty fast if he did. He glared up at Janus. “Whatever you did to F.R.I.D.A.Y., I’m going to need her back to open this.”

Janus glanced at Aceso, unsure, and Tony took a stab in the dark. “You didn’t do it.” He followed his eyes to Aceso, about to ask how the hell she had turned off his multi-million dollar A.I. to get in here - _twice_ , if he counted the incident with Peter - but his eyes caught on Bruce, faced screwed up in pain, breaths coming in short gasps as blood spread across the workshop floor. He didn’t have time for those kinds of questions right now. “I’ll need to reboot her, it can take time…”

“Then reboot her quickly.”

Tony's jaw ticked, but Bruce didn’t have time for him to argue, so he said, “F.R.I.D.A.Y.? Reboot, if you can.”

He was met with silence. For all of three seconds. Then - 

_“I rebooted approximately three minutes ago, Boss. I thought it prudent to not announce my presence until my alarm call was answered.”_

Then the stairs to the workshop were filled with running Avengers, as Rhodey, Steve and Sam burst down the stairway. Rhodey got there first, slamming his hand on the access panel. The workshop door didn’t move.

“Aceso!” Steve called through the door. “Whatever you’re doing - stop. _Now.”_ He slammed a fist on the door as he said it, but Tony knew that wouldn’t so much as crack the glass. This workshop had been made to withstand Iron Man suit test drives - it would hold up under Captain America’s fists.

Tony swiveled his eyes over to Janus, who now noticeably nervous, even below the mask. “You can keep doors locked? That is the worst superpower I’ve _ever_ heard of.”

Janus’s answer to grab the arc reactor in Tony’s chest and twist it, ignoring the shouts it elicited from the Avengers waiting at the door as the metal ground against muscle and bone.

“Aceso,” Melinoe whimpered, backing as far away from the door as she could. “We need to go.”

“No. I’m not finished. I need to do this.” More and more of Aceso’s cool persona was crumbling away. “Open the server, Stark.”

“What’s the point? You can’t hope to get out of here.”

Rhodey had gone from trying his handprint to ripping the sensor from the wall, trying to mess with the wiring, but if Janus had somehow locked it magically, that wasn’t going to help.

It turned out not to matter. One second Janus’s hand was on the arc reactor, and the next he was on the floor, an arrow through one eye, and the door to the workshop was bursting open.

Melinoe shrieked and backed away, going translucent and vanishing into a wall like a ghost. Steeling herself, Aceso maneuvered so that Bruce was in front of her, using him as a shield as Clint dropped from the workshop’s ceiling vent.

“You need me alive to heal him,” Aceso called to the approaching Avengers. “So I suggest you don’t shoot me.”

Sam and Rhodey hesitated in the door, guns drawn, while Steve took a cautious step forward. “You’re outnumbered, and there’s nowhere to run. We don’t want to hurt you.”

Aceso tightened her grip on Bruce. “No, but you don’t want to help me either, or people like me.”

“That’s not true. I’m sorry if we made you feel that way.”

“Five years,” she breathed, her voice soft again. “I was in that prison for _five years_. No one cared. No one came for me. And no one is going to do anything for anyone else like me, so I have to.” She snapped her fingers at Tony. “Stark. Come here.”

Tony was aware of everyone’s eyes on him, of Steve and Rhodey shaking their heads at him, but Bruce was barely breathing now so he did as he was told. He edged nearer, then nearer still when Aceso glared at him. “Get on your knees.”

“Tony, don’t,” Rhodey insisted, risking a step closer.

“Get on your knees,” Aceso repeated. “And I’ll reverse one of the bullet wounds.”

Tony held out one hand placatingly to Rhodey, all but collapsing to his knees by Aceso’s side, seeing black for a second. He wrenched himself back; passing out was not an option right now. “Ok. I’m here. Reverse one.”

The mess that had been Bruce’s kneecap started to shift and repair, and Bruce’s eyes fluttered back open, finding Tony first. “Tony -”

“It’s ok. I’m going to get you out of this.”

“Hurts,” Bruce whispered, sounding more bemused than scared. “It feels…I forgot.”

Sam stepped up beside Steve, lowering his gun. “Steve, we need to get them both to a doctor, _now.”_

“They won’t make it,” Aceso stated. “They only survive if I reverse this.”

Steve sheathed his weapon. “Ok. What do you need?”

“Get out, all of you. Wait outside the door. Don’t call for backup. When I’m done, you’ll have them back.”

“You can’t have what’s on the server,” Tony insisted, even as she glared at him. He glared right back. “F.R.I.D.A.Y., don’t let her near it. F.R.I.D.A.Y?”

No answer. Then all the lights in the workshop turned off at once.

Tony felt the hand coming for him before it grasped his neck, dragging him forward, causing a fresh wave of pain through his sternum. He scrabbled at it until he realized that it was just holding him in place, Aceso blocking her open side as the generator kicked in. The backup red lights illuminated the room and a new voice, low and female and terrified shouting, “What the hell, Aceso?”

Tony tried to look over his shoulder but Aceso was holding him too tightly. All he saw was Clint’s aim shift and the woman he couldn’t see shrieked, followed by a crash as it sounded like she backed into a workbench.

“How many of there are you?” Tony got out, trying to break Aceso’s hold. She shook him once, roughly, causing the arc reactor to rattle around inside him. He hissed, going still.

“Janus?” he heard the woman behind him gasp. “What the -”

_Janus._ Tony recalled the way the doors had opened the moment the man hit the floor, and the cogs in his exhausted brain started churning.

“Hermes, come here,” Aceso ordered.

“Make one move and this arrow goes loose,” Clint retorted, aim still on the woman Tony couldn’t see.

Aceso pulled both Bruce and Tony closer to her. “She’s getting me out of here. We get what we came for, we get away, and I fix your friends. Ok?”

They all stood stock still, locked in the standoff. Bruce shifted in her grip, wincing. “Aceso. Listen.”

Aceso ignored him. “Hermes. _Here.”_

“You don’t have to run,” Bruce insisted. “You can reverse anything, right? Nothing’s happened that can’t be undone.” He caught Tony’s eye. “I know running can sometimes feel like the only option. But it’s not.”

Aceso didn’t loosen her grip, but there was a quaver in her voice when she next spoke. “You won’t help. No one will. It’s on us - on _me_. It always has been.”

Steve cleared his throat, putting both palms up. “I’m sorry you feel that way. But we really do want to help, especially if Ross still has enhanced illegally on the Raft. No one has to die today if you just let them go.”

It was the wrong thing to say, the cold edge creeping back into her voice. “That’s the thing, though, _Captain._ It’s not illegal.”

“It _is_ ,” Tony insisted. “That’s what the amendments were for.”

She turned to glare at him, the movement shifting Bruce so suddenly that a fresh wave of blood rushed from the wounds in his gut and shoulder, making him cry out. Tony met her eyes, and took away her last trump card. “Janus was keeping the doors locked. He’s dead; they’re open. That means-”

The hand on his throat squeezed tight, cutting off his next sentence but it was enough for Rhodey to catch on, raising his gun at her again and moving around to the side. Aceso shifted Tony in turn, moving him into Rhodey’s trajectory. “So if you die,” Rhodey reasoned. “Everything you’ve done goes away. Tony goes back to post-surgery, Bruce gets his healing factor back.”

She met him with a hard look. “Maybe. Maybe not. If you’re wrong, and you kill me before I reverse the injuries, they’ll die. And if you’re right, then killing me would reverse everything.” She indicated his legs. _“Everything._ Hermes!” 

There was a shuffle behind him and then the _thwip_ of an arrow followed by a shriek, but it sounded more like one of surprise than pain. “Don’t move,” Clint reminded her. “The next one will hit."

“Just jump behind me!” Aceso snapped at her. She was breathing hard, tension radiating from her as she seemed to come to a decision. “Fine. We’ll leave the server. But I’m not letting everything we've done go to waste. Janus didn’t die for nothing. I have to get something out of this. This has to be worth _something_.”

Then, with one swift movement, the hand on Tony’s throat wrapped around the arc reactor instead and pulled, followed by the agonizing burn of a wound being cauterized.

Or, in this case, _un-cauterized_. 

Tony felt the muscle inside him shift as the only prevention method stopping him from bleeding out was ripped away. She was killing him. The information came with a kind of incredulous acceptance. He was dying, right here in his workshop, surrounded by his tech and his teammates, and he could do nothing to stop it.

_“_ For god’s sake, _Hermes!_ We’re going!”

Tony felt blood swell up his throat, his body start to shut down. Aceso spun him around, leaning him against her, eyes on the gun in Rhodey’s hand.

“Reverse it,” Rhodey demanded. The demeanor was all calm soldier, but Tony knew his friend well enough to see the cracks beneath it, the panic showing through. _“Now.”_

“Or what, you’ll shoot me, go back to being broken forever? Are you willing to make that sacrifice for someone who doesn’t care about anything but himself?”

Rhodey didn’t even hesitate, eyes still on Tony. “Yes.”

“Then why haven’t you taken the shot?”

“Because I’m distracting you.”

Then the second air vent into Tony’s workshop rang out with the sound of a shot, and Natasha Romanoff dropped into the room as Aceso hit the floor. Tony had a moment to register that the pain in his chest had faded before he gave up the battle with consciousness and hit the ground, the last thing he heard being a familiar roar and the flash of green skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important notes for this chapter: 
> 
> 1) Accords in the Whumptoberverse are what I want them to be because that thing called plot needs to happen  
> 2) My answer to any medical inaccuracies are because COMIC BOOK SCIENCE, that's why


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Brief mention of suicide attempt

The first thing Tony did when he woke up was feel for a car battery in his chest.

His hands hit a crinkly hospital gown instead, blinking as the fluorescent lights hit his eyes. He tried to swallow past the sandpaper in his throat as he sat up, wincing as his head started pounding. Immediately there were familiar hands helping him, pressing a styrofoam cup into his hands. “Drink all of it.”

Tony sipped and grimaced at the sweetness, but he trusted this voice enough by now to follow it. He downed the rest of the electrolyte-laced drink, the headache reducing somewhat.He choked back the dregs, then; “I told you so.”

He was rewarded with Rhodey’s low laugh. “Ok. I’ll give you that one.”

The cup was taken away and refilled. Tony was about to protest until he realized it was water to wash the aftertaste of the sugar away.

He sat up, eyes adjusting. The first thing they found was Rhodey’s braces and, to his horror, he felt them grow wet.

“Hey. Look at me.”

Tony tilted his head up to his oldest friend, swallowing past a lump in his throat.

“Because I already know where that brain of yours is heading,” Rhodey continued. “I’m going to head it off at the station. I am fine. This,” he gestured to his legs. “Is fine. And one hundred percent _not your fault.”_

Bits and pieces of what had happened in the lab were swirling back, although most it of was tainted by the memory of pain, bones inside him shifting, the smell of his skin burning -

He slapped a hand to his chest again, feeling nothing but smooth skin under the hospital gown. No hole. No battery. No arc reactor.

“You’re ok,” Rhodey was saying. “Sleep-deprived and dehydrated, but then again, when are you not?”

Tony nodded but didn’t take his hand away, as though the loss of contact with his skin would mean the hole would open up again. “Bruce?”

“He’s ok as well. You both are.”

“Aceso?”

Rhodey sighed. “Nat had to do it. You would have died if she hadn’t.”

_You won’t help. No one will. It’s on us - on me. It always has been._

Those words had hit home. “She was so young. And what she could do…” Tony forced himself not to look at Rhodey’s legs, but doing so was as conspicuous as if he had put a bullseye on them. “She could have helped a lot of people.”

“We gave her every chance to surrender,” Rhodey insisted. “If she had just stopped and listened instead of fighting, even when she knew she’d lost, she would have been ok.” He must have noted the expression on Tony’s face because he plowed on. “Tones, she was _torturing_ you.”

“She was angry! And she had every right to be!”

“Doesn’t excuse what she did.” Rhodey’s eyes were wary, questioning. “We had to.”

“I’m not blaming you,” Tony assured him. “That’s not what I’m…” The words didn’t come, so he dropped it, not even sure where the urge to defend his would-be murderer was coming from.He had more pressing matters to attend to anyway than dwelling on what could have been. He pushed the bedsheets aside, but Rhodey caught his shoulder.

“No you don’t. You haven’t been cleared.”

Tony gestured down at himself. “Killing Aceso reversed everything she did, right? So I’m fine.”

“Tony -”

“Rhodey.”

_“Tony.”_ Rhodey interrupted him again before he could swing out of bed. “We’re running tests.”

“But -”

_“We’re running tests.”_

Tony groaned at having his own words turned on him but gave in, slumping back against the pillows. “At least fill me in. What are we doing about Ross?”

“ _You_ are resting and _I_ am making sure you stay put until a doctor says you can go.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “We just found out that the Secretary of State is illegally detaining and torturing enhanced and _that’s_ the best use of our time?”

“Yes,” Rhodey said, without hesitation. “Pepper and Steve are already with the legal team. They’re putting together a solid enough case to get a search warrant for the Raft.”

“What, Rogers isn’t going to just bust in there fists first and fly them out on the back of a bald eagle or something?” The quip fell flat, and Tony grimaced. “Pepper shouldn’t be dealing with this stuff. She’s busy enough as it is.”

“She volunteered. You want to tell Pepper Potts no? Because I sure as hell don’t.”

“At least let me help.”

“You’re not leaving -”

“It’s 2017, get me a damn Starkpad. I won’t even leave the bed, I pinky swear.” He looked down at the hospital gown. “Although maybe a change of clothes might be in order. Clothes, then Starkpad.”

“I’m not your assistant.”

“Of course not. Fri? Be a dear and get someone to send me a suit? The three-piece kind, not the nanotech weapons kind.”

_“Your suits of both kinds will be waiting for you in your quarters once you have been discharged from the med bay, Boss.”_

Tony glared at the ceiling. “Traitor.”

_“I am programmed to prioritize the health and wellbeing of all Compound residents.You wrote the code yourself.”_

“Fine.” Tony settled back in bed, drumming his fingers on the mattress. “How do I get discharged then?”

“Two more hours of observation and a final check by a doctor.”

Tony groaned again, not bothering it hide it.

“I’ve never seen you so eager to get to a legal meeting.”

“And you never will again.” Tony changed tactics. “What about the other two? Melinoe and…did Aceso call the other one Hermes?”

“Both gone. We think Hermes can teleport.She was Aceso’s escape plan, and we’re guessing that’s how she grabbed Peter from bed without any of us noticing.”

Tony swore. “Great, so we have enhanced terrorists who can pop into the Compound whenever they like. Fantastic. Any idea how they got past F.R.I.D.A.Y?”

F.R.I.D.A.Y. spoke up before Rhodey could. _“My systems were shut down each time upon the arrival of the enhanced referred to as Hermes.”_

“Noted. I’ll fix that. Add it to the to-do list. Although,” he added. “I guess if we bust the rest of the enhanced out of the Raft, they’ll have no reason to try again. Hm.” Tony bit his lip, staring at the ceiling.

“Talk to me.”

“Just…why did she have to…” Tony gestured to his chest. “We would have listened. We would have stopped Ross. She didn’t have to keep fighting. She could have…” He trailed off.

“Fixed me?”

“Yeah.”

“Well that’s redundant, I’m not _broken._ ” Rhodey leaned forward. “Eyes on me when I say this.”

Reluctantly, Tony met his gaze.

“I’m fine. Really. And yeah, look, if I had the choice, I’m not saying I would choose this. But it’s happened, and it took some time and therapy, but I’m there. And if you put me back in either situation - signing the Accords, or saving you - I’d choose this in a heartbeat. Because it was right, and because I love you, and because I trust you.”

Tony lost the battle with keeping eye contact, choosing to stare at his knees instead. Because he so badly wanted those words to be the ones that undid the knot in that has twisted in his stomach since Siberia. Because he knew he couldn’t return them, even though he meant them. Because he knew Rhodey meant them, and yet that knot didn’t lessen.

Rhodey seemed to understand, because he settled back in his chair, pulling a Starkpad onto his lap, ignoring Tony’s indignant squawk. “And before you ask - no you can’t have one. You’re resting.” 

“But -”

“Rest, Tony. The crisis will still be there in two hours. This fight is a marathon, not a sprint. So take the moment to catch your breath while you can, and let the rest of us take up the baton for once.”

Tony made a show of grumbling as he flopped back on the pillows. Catch his breath. Right.

Somehow he didn’t think that was going to be happening any time soon.

***

In between legal meetings, wiping his computer server, and cleaning up his workshop, it was two days before Tony got the chance to see Bruce.

When he found the workshop in much less disarray than he was expecting, F.R.I.D.A.Y. had explained to him that Bruce had Hulked out enough to heal his wounds, before shrinking back to human form again and promptly passing out by Tony’s side. Tony hadn’t been prepared for the amount of blood splattered over the floor and tables, which had to be carefully cleaned, unsure if Bruce’s spilled blood had turned radioactive again after Aceso’s death.

Tony had stared at the spot in the floor when she had fallen, a body-shaped print in the congealed blood, until F.R.I.D.A.Y. had sent Rhodey to pull him away and organize a clean-up crew.

With a warrant to search the Raft and a second for Ross’s arrests in the works, Pepper had hurried Tony out of the latest legal meeting by assuring him that the rest was all lawyer-speak and jargon and that he looked like hell and should go to bed.

He didn’t go to bed.

Tony didn’t even realize his feet were taking him to Bruce’s quarters until he was knocking on his door.

There was a crash and then hurried footsteps inside the apartment. The door opened a crack, then all the way when Bruce saw who was standing there. “Tony? Is everything ok? What time is it?”

Tony blinked, realizing he had no idea. Time hadn’t ever really a concept for him before Pepper; he had worked and played and drank as he felt like it, no matter where the sun was in the sky. Then a certain red-head had entered his life and suddenly there had been a reason to go to bed, someone to wake up to in the morning, someone who made him want to spend his time without the cloudy haze of alcohol or drugs.

Then he had lost her, and more, and time hadn’t really been relevant since.

Tony checked his watch. It was well after 2 am. “I woke you.”

Bruce waved him off. “Doesn’t matter.” He stood to one side, yawning. “Come in. I’ll make tea.”

“You mean coffee right.”

“Tony, I’m not feeding you caffeine at two in the morning.”

Tony rolled his eyes, but without venom. He accepted the mug of tea Bruce prepped for him, then wrinkled his nose. “What the hell is this, Banner?”

“Ashwagandha.”

“Bless you.”

“It’s an Indian herbal tea for relieving stress and anxiety. Ashwagandha means the smell of horse.”

“So you deprive me of coffee and instead feed me Eau du Seabiscuit? Consider me offended.” Tony wanted to push it away but found having something to occupy his hands too tempting so he wrinkled his nose and kept it close, blowing on it, sending the steam swirling in all directions. “So. You’re still here.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.” Bruce settled down in the seat opposite Tony’s, the kitchen counter still between them.

Tony’s eyes flicked over to the go-bag, still packed beside the door. The apartment barely looked lived in. Tony had set it up with the rest of the Compound, ignoring the others’ looks of pity as he had done so. He’d built it away from the rest of the apartments so the others wouldn’t be living next to an empty set of rooms, reminding them of what they had lost.

“But you’re not staying.”

Bruce sighed. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“We’re going to get Ross arrested. You know that right?” Tony took a sip of the tea without thinking. “Ugh. Why do you drink this poison?”

“Anything to keep the Other Guy at bay. It’s nice once you get used to it.”

“Is it?”

Bruce winced, caught. “The tea? Yes. The being constantly on guard, waiting for disaster to strike? No.”

“I think I can relate to that second one.” Tony swirled the tea, turning the steaming liquid into a whirlpool. “The night Aceso was in the lab…you came back. Why?” 

Bruce leaned against the counter, pulling his glasses off to rub his eyes. He looked better than when he had first landed in the Compound’s landing zone, but barely, and the encounter in the workshop hadn’t helped. His skin looked as if it was clinging to his bones, the shadows under his eyes still deep. “I didn’t want to leave things like that between us. Not after I just took off last time. So I came back. Lucky I did, I guess.”

_“Lucky?”_ Tony shoved the tea away, getting to his feet. “Bruce, she shot you. Three times. You were a bleeding puddle on my floor!”

Bruce shrugged in a way that was far too nonchalant for Tony’s liking. “And now I’m fine.”

Tony glared at him as he parroted the words Bruce had said to Aceso. “ _But Tony is my friend._ Dammit Banner, for a genius you can really be an idiot, you know that right? You basically handed yourself over to her as leverage on a gold-titanium alloy platter.”

“Yeah, guess I wasn’t thinking.”

Bruce was a genius in so many areas. Lying wasn’t one of them. “Tell me you didn’t get her to shoot you on purpose.”

Bruce shuffled, uncomfortable, and that was all the answer Tony needed.

“Tell me you aren’t actually that stupid. Because I may have told one or two people in my life that your intelligence rivals mine.”

Bruce sighed, taking another sip of the tea. “Either she was going to torture you until you died, or you were going to hand the server over to her anyway, and I knew you would hate yourself for that forever if you did it save yourself. Which we would have understood if you had, by the way. I saw a third option; I took it.”

Tony had stopped listening. “That doesn’t excuse -”

“Tony, it’s done. We’re both still here.”

“You know I’d never want you to get hurt because of me. Right?”

“And you know that if our positions had been switched, you would have done the exact same thing.” Bruce circled around the kitchen bench, taking one of the stools so he and Tony were sitting side by side instead. “And yes, I do know that. Look, when I found out about Ross…it was a shock. I know I reacted badly.”

Tony shrugged it off. “Well, turned out you were right, so.”

“Tony, the Accords didn’t come from Ross. They came from the UN. Ross may have been their spokesperson but I understand why you didn’t feel like you had a choice in signing them.”

Tony’s hopes perked up. “So you’re signing?”

Bruce shifted, uncomfortable. “I haven’t decided.”

“But Ross is gone now. Or at least he’s going to be - there’s no way he’s going to be able to get around the case my legal team is cooking up.”

“I know.” Bruce ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. “UN oversight is not the worst thing in the world, especially considering our less than stellar track record with civilian casualties and property damage.”

“So sign.”

“ _But.”_

Tony fought back a groan. Of course. There was always a ‘but’.

_“_ I’ve spent years trying to stay out of the government’s hands,” Bruce pressed. “And just because Ross is gone, doesn’t mean someone just like him isn’t going to come along and try to use the Accords for their own purposes. And even though the Other Guy seems to be gone, for now, I don’t know if that’s going to stay the same forever.”

Tony put up his hands, fighting a pounding headache growing behind his eyes. Coffee would have helped, he was sure of it. “Ok. Can we just…one thing at a time.” He took a breath. “Ok, thing one. Never trick a terrorist with superpowers into shooting you again, and I can’t believe I actually had to say that sentence out loud. Thing two; why is the Other Guy gone?”

Bruce bit his lip. “He’s not gone, so much as he won’t come out.”

“Yeah. I saw the footage from the workshop. You were barely green before he went back into his hidey-hole again. Bruce?”

Bruce had gone very still, gripping the mug so tight his knuckles were white. Tony scooted a seat closer, hand hovering over Bruce’s wrist. When he didn’t pull away, Tony let it land there. “Why won’t he come out? What happened to you in space?”

The mug handle snapped, digging into Bruce’s palm. Tony instinctively dived forward to help but Bruce’s uninjured hand smacked him away. “Radioactive. Don’t touch.”

Tony hovered awkwardly by the kitchen bar instead as Bruce rinsed his hand under the tap, the water turning red, before wrapping up the cut in a tea towel. “Look, you don’t have to tell me. But if you think it would help, I can listen. Which is not my forte, I know, but you fell asleep during my whole Mandarin story, so I think it’s safe to say the bar is fairly low here.”

Bruce didn’t elaborate, changing the subject instead“What’s the plan for the enhanced? The ones you’re going to bring back from the Raft?”

Tony hesitated, not quite ready to drop it yet, but if Bruce didn’t want to talk, he couldn’t make him. “We’re turning the Tower into a kind of halfway house, putting together a staff that has a much better track record of dealing with that kind of thing than we do. Make sure they’re ok, then get them back out in the world.”

Bruce nodded, briefly smiling at the mention of the Tower. “No one told me why we moved up here.”  
  
“Well, after Ultron trashed the place I figured I owed everyone a new home.

“It’s nice.”

The words were melancholy. “Sorry you couldn’t come home,” Tony said softly. “Not that the Tower was ever home, home,” he amended. “I know that.”

“It was home.”

Tony gestured around the apartment. “I mean, I know it’s a little bare, but give it some TLC…” He broke off as Bruce looked unsure again. “Right. You know you don’t have to stay. I meant it when I said I’d help you disappear, if you need it.” When an awkward silence followed the words, Tony steered the conversation in a different direction. “I know it’s kind of weird to think this, but I’m happy Aceso got what she wanted. Not the server stuff, obviously. But freeing the other enhanced.”

Bruce shook his head. “She was still wrong. You know that right?”

“Look, I’m never going to advocate for bullets going into people I care about, I’m just saying…” What was he saying? “She was angry. She had every right to be.”

“But not at you.”

Tony shrugged, the knot in his stomach making itself known again. “She was imprisoned and beaten for five years, Bruce.”

“Yeah, that’s terrible. So is trapping someone in a table and ripping apart their sternum.”

“I’m not saying…” Tony broke off, grimacing when he couldn’t find the words he was looking for. “She was hurt. She was angry. She lashed out. And maybe that last bit was about revenge but…she was mostly trying to protect people. Do the right thing.”

“Are we still talking about Aceso?”

“Who else would we be talking about?”

Bruce shot him a look as if to say _You’re not fooling me_ , but didn’t press it.

“So, if you take off again…” Tony shuffled his feet. “When?”

Bruce sighed. “Soon. If they really press me into signing…I don’t know, Tony. I don’t think I can be under the government’s thumb like that. I know it seems ok now but down the line, I don’t know what they’re going to ask me to do, whether Ross is in office or not. I’ve hurt so many people; I don’t want to add to that list because some bureaucrat decides a foreign country is giving them trouble they think a Hulk could handle.”

“I wouldn’t let that happen.”

“And,” Bruce went on. “I wouldn’t want them coming after you or anyone else on the team if I decided I had to say no. You do remember Amendment 6c, right?”

“So you did read the Accords.”

“Yes, I read them. Several times. I have some notes.”

“Well, they’re a work in progress.”

“Do you remember Amendment 6c?”

Tony did. Any anti-government action any of the Avengers took would hold consequences for the whole team. It had been one of Ross’s added clauses that Tony had lost the fight to keep out of the revised Accords. He knew it had been aimed mostly at Steve; no more running after long-lost war buddies, or the whole team would feel it. “Yeah, I remember it. And if your mind isn’t made up…at least sleep on it? One more night?”

“One more night,” Bruce agreed. “I’ll give you my answer tomorrow. Although, I don’t think it’s going to be the one you want.” He glanced around the apartment. “I know you set this up for me after Sokovia.”

“Well, I figured you’d be back. Knew you’d miss my toys too much.”

Bruce unwrapped the tea towel from his hand, avoiding Tony’s eyes. The cut seemed to have stopped bleeding, so Bruce wrapped it in a second, cleaner tea towel. “Does this Compound have resources for deposing of radiation?”

“We have resources for everything.”

“Of course. Look who I’m talking to.” Bruce offered him a smile. It didn’t last. “While we’re talking…he didn’t ruin my life. The Other Guy. At least not in the way that you took it.”

Tony folded his arms, moving until the kitchen bench was between them again. “And how was I meant to take it?”

“Do you remember when we met? You said the Other Guy saved my life, considering all that radiation should have killed me.”

“Of course I remember, that’s our origin story.”

“And he did it again. When I…” Bruce mimed putting a gun in his mouth, and Tony winced. “Too graphic? Sorry. I said it was a nice sentiment.”

“I already said I remember. What are you getting at?”

Bruce was pulling the tea towel so tightly that the visible skin was turning a pale blue. “Firstly, I’m not suicidal.”

“Your little stunt with Aceso could have fooled me.”

“I’m not,” Bruce insisted. “I haven’t been for a own time. But that doesn’t mean…look, I think we’ve both been in enough messed up situations by now to know that death isn’t the worst card you can pull.”

Tony went very still. “What are you talking about?” When Bruce didn’t answer, he pressed, “What happened in space? You don’t have to tell me details, but -

“No,” Bruce cut him off. “I think…I should tell someone. Yeah. I want it to be you.”

“Ok. I’m listening.”

“I was the Other Guy when I took off. No plan, nothing, just getting away from everything. Everyone. After Maximoff got in my head…I needed space.” He half-laughed. “Well, I got all the space there was. For a year and a half.”

Tony debated moving closer, but blood was beginning the stain through the new tea towel and he figured Bruce wouldn’t take too kindly to him being near the wound until it had stopped bleeding.

“But you landed somewhere, right?”

Bruce shook his head. “Earth. Space. Back to earth.”

Tony frowned, trying to find the logic in that. “But you couldn’t have been up there for that long. There was no way there was food or water in that tiny jet to last you -” He broke off, the implications of that sinking in.

Bruce was shaking as he said, “Well, the Other Guy can’t die. So.”

In three seconds, Tony had crossed the room and pulled Bruce against his side, careful not to touch the wound. He remembered Bruce’s emaciated frame as he had stepped out of that spacecraft, basically a living skeleton -

“Bruce…”

Bruce leaned into him and Tony hastily lowered them both to the floor before they toppled over, rubbing comforting circles on Bruce’s back.

“We starved,” Bruce into Tony’s shoulder, his voice thick. “The Other Guy, he ‘protected’ me from it. He wouldn’t let me turn back. Every time we’ve turned it’s been like either one of us has had a hand on the steering wheel. This time it was like he was in the driver’s seat and had me locked in the trunk. And we were him but I could feel it. I could feel…”

Tony was glad Bruce couldn’t see the expression of horror on his face. “But you came back. You came back as you.”

“Yeah.” Bruce leaned away, wiping his eyes. The shoulder of Tony’s t-shirt was wet. He didn’t comment on it. “We, um, hitched a ride. I convinced the Other Guy I might have a better chance of convincing her than he did.”

“Her?”

“Ok, this is going to sound crazy.”

“I’m 98% certain that nothing can sound crazy to me anymore. Hit me.”

“I didn’t even know it had been a year and a half until she picked me up. No way to measure time up there. I just knew it had been…a long time. A really, really long time. The big guy doesn’t hallucinate but I figured, first time for everything. At least that’s what I thought when I saw a glowing woman outside the window. Then she pulled me into her spacecraft.”

“The one currently parked in the Compound loading zone that the UN won’t let me tear to shreds for parts?

“That’s the one.”

“So glowing space lady - alien? One of the good ones?”

“Actually, no. Human. Mostly. Her name was Carol Danvers.”

“You were rescued by some lady named Carol?”

“Yeah, offered me a ride back to earth once she heard the story.”

Tony frowned. “But you came alone.”

“Yeah.” Bruce seemed to notice for the first time that Tony was crouching awkwardly next to him, and shuffled to the side so they could lean against the kitchen cabinets instead. “We were attacked on the way here. Some race of alien called the Kree. I tried to fight but…” He gestured to himself. “He wouldn’t come out. I think he might be done.”

“For good?”

“He spent eighteen months starving and unable to die. Honestly, he as happy for Aceso to get rid of him as I was.”

Tony let out a long breath, not sure what to say. “That’s messed up, even by our standards.”

“Yeah,” Bruce agreed. “So Carol put me in one of their ships and set the coordinates for earth, and then went off to fight more Kree. I think you’d like her.”

“Maybe I’ll get to meet her one day. Tell her thank you for bringing you home. Or, well, maybe not home. But back, at least.” After a beat he added, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Dumping all this on you - the Accords, Ross, Siberia - when you’d been through that.”

“Well, I didn’t tell you, did I?” Bruce considered. “I feel a bit better though. For telling someone.”

“We can talk about it more.”

Bruce shook his head. “Not tonight.”

Tony sighed. “It’s times like this I really wish I hadn’t given up drinking.”

Bruce offered a wry smile. “Well, there’s always Ashwagandha.”

Tony shuddered. “I’ll make you a deal. Let’s be honest with each other from now on, and you never try to feed me that pony juice again.”

“Deal.”

Neither of them went to sleep that night, but moved from the kitchen floor to the couch and switched between reminiscing on old times and Tony filling Bruce in on some of the more fun times they had had since Sokovia - not that he had been part of many of them.

As the sun started to rise, and Bruce yawned and finally admitted defeat, Tony pushed him off to bed with a promise to do the same that he immediately broke. He ended up in his now-clean and sterilized workshop, opening his computer server.

Tony still didn’t know what Aceso had wanted, but he wasn’t risking a repeat incident, and had asked F.R.I.D.A.Y. to start systematically sorting through the files. He’d keep most of the SI stuff; delete the weapons. He’d felt a pang as he’d asked it. It was years of work, gone. Then he’d remembered Peter’s face as he’d pulled up the floorboards in his workshop; Bruce bleeding out in almost the exact same spot. 

He hadn’t thought twice before he confirmed the order after that.

“What’s left on here, Fri?”

_“SI works in progress, mostly.”_

“Anything that could be weaponized?”

_“Not that I am aware of, and I am aware of almost everything.”_

“Only almost, huh? We’ll have to do something about that. What else?”

_“Project Cassandra.”_

“Keep it. What else we got?”

_“The Winter Soldier files.”_

Tony felt his heart skip. Those he had to delete; he shouldn’t have kept them in the first place.

_“Boss? Keep or delete?”_

Tony felt that knot in his stomach like a millstone. He thought talking to Bruce would have lessened it, at least a little. It hadn’t. It was sitting heavy in his gut, gnawing at him as it had for months. He thought about deleting the files, and it twisted painfully. 

He should delete them though. He really should.

_“Boss? Should I delete them? Boss?”_

Tony swallowed, trying to ignore the weight he’d been carrying since Siberia. He couldn’t.

“Keep.”


	5. Epilogue

Michael Harding was a close to milk toast as a human could be. He almost reminded Tony of Phil Coulson, with his ability to blend into the background as though he was part of the wallpaper. But while Phil had complimented that with a wry wit, an underlying sense of trust andI-will-taser-you-into-the-carpet-and-watch-Supernanny-if-you-mess-with-me attitude, Harding seemed to be made out of red tape and dotted lines.

Tony didn’t care. It was going to make the monthly Accords meetings even more boring now he had no Ross to poke at, but at least it wasn’t going to lead to any more enhanced reenacting his Afghanistan glory days. Hopefully. There had been no more attacks so far, and Tony was beginning to believe that there wouldn’t be since Aceso’s goal of releasing the imprisoned enhanced was on its way to being achieved. Pepper had guided their legal team and Rhodey had used his military contacts to lean on the Accords committee, hard, until they had agreed to set up a meeting with the Assistant Secretary.

Harding was currently sifting through the case in front of him, sitting at the head of the table in one of the Compound’s meeting rooms with Tony to his left and Steve to his right. Steve was waiting patiently for Harding to speak; Tony, not so much.

“So?” Tony pressed after fifteen minutes that felt like hours had gone by. “When are you arresting Ross?”

Harding cleared his throat, coughing into a wrinkled up handkerchief he pulled from a sleeve. “It’s not that simple.”

Steve maintained politeness as he asked, “Ross has been illegally detaining people on the Raft for years. We have witnesses -”

“But you don’t,” Harding interrupted him. Tony saw Steve’s jaw tick, but the super-soldier didn’t object. “You have footage of enhanced terrorists making claims with no evidence to back them up.”

“Then search the Raft!” The pounding behind Tony’s eyes was back, and he fought the urge not to rub his temples. “Get a warrant - go _get_ the evidence.”

“Mr Stark, I need you to understand that these things take time. There are protocols.”

“And I think that if it was you sitting in an underwater cell, those protocols would suddenly become a lot less important.”

“Ok,” Steve interrupted the brewing argument. “Assistant Secretary, I’m sure you can understand that time is of the essence here. What can we do to hurry things along?” Tony almost snorted at the false pleasantries, especially as he could see Steve’s fists curled under the table.

Harding picked a point in between them to stare at, giving the impression he was addressing both and neither at the same time. It was undisputedly annoying. “What you need to understand is that you are not in control anymore. You no longer get to go around demolishing property or deciding who is imprisoned and who is free. We have rules and a justice system for a reason, and no one is above that. Not even the Avengers. Or need I remind you that you let a war criminal into your ranks without so much as a trial for her crimes?”

It took Tony a full five seconds to click that Harding was referring to Wanda. He saw Steve open his mouth, about to argue, and shot him a look. That was a battle for another day. “You’re right, she never got a trial,” Tony agreed. “And if that day comes, my legal team will have a field day. They’re rather good, I’m told.” The last words were aimed at Steve, and it seemed to be enough to get him to drop the subject, at least for now.

“Indeed. I imagine this,” Harding gestured to the case Tony’s lawyers had put together. “Took more money than most make in a year; perhaps several years. And I’m not going to deny that a lot of it is compelling. Do understand Mr Stark, Captain Rogers, that I am not against you. I’m not against enhanced persons being a functioning and useful part of society. But I do believe in proper management and regulations being observed.” His next words were aimed at Tony. “Such as being informed if an enhanced and/or dangerous individual such as Bruce Banner returns to our borders.”

Only decades in front of the press and the board stopped Tony from reacting with anything but a gracious smile. “We were in the process of informing you. These things take time. There are protocols.”

Harding didn’t react, which pissed Tony off even more. Sure, he shouldn’t be trying to get a rise out of their new government contact, but something other than that blank expression would have been nice. “You were harboring an unregistered enhanced in your lodgings and did not inform us. You must understand why, with that in mind, I must take extra precautions with your claims against General-Secretary Ross.”

Steve chimed in. “With all due respect sir, I hardly see how the two are connected. If innocent people are being detained -”

“Innocent is not the word I’d use. We cannot prove that, if there are enhanced detained on the Raft, that General-Secretary Ross did not have our best interests in sending them there. Most enhanced aren’t even in this country legally.”

Steve crossed his arms. “I don’t see how that’s relevant to what we’re discussing.”

“I will review your case,” Harding decided, starting to pack up. “And let you know when we have come to a decision as to whether or not to grant you a warrant for the Raft.”

Tony remembered the bruises covering Aceso’s face and body. “Not good enough.”

For the first time, Harding looked him directly in the eye. “You wish us to move faster.”

“I’m sure you can understand why that’s necessary,” Steve added. 

Harding nodded, as though he had expected the conversation to turn in this direction. “The problem lies with the breach of trust concerning Dr Banner’s return. If you can prove to us that that trust is still in effect, and the Avengers are still willing to work under government supervision, then your accusations against Ross will hold more weight.”

“You want Bruce to sign the Accords,” Tony confirmed.

“Dr Banner can either sign the Accords or be marked as a fugitive from the law. That is his choice.”

“Not much of a choice,” Steve interjected. “What else?”

Harding turned his attention to him and for the first time the slightest expression showed; just the subtle curling of his lip as he looked Steve’s way. “In order for us to trust you, you need to show that you trust us, and not hide certain assets from our oversight.”

“Bruce isn’t an asset,” Tony retorted, then broke off when he saw Steve’s face. Steve Rogers only looked like that when he was thinking about one person. “Barnes,” Tony realized. “You want Barnes.”

“This isn’t about what I want,” Harding replied. “It’s about having a national threat under our observation. Which he currently is not.”

Tony thought Steve’s teeth were going to shatter from how tightly his jaw was clenched, so he took point. “What makes you think we know where he is?”

“Don’t waste my time, Mr Stark.”

Ok, maybe Harding was smarter than the blank expression and boring suit let on.

“We found him somewhere that can help,” Steve said. “Somewhere that removed all the Winter Soldier programming. It’s gone; he’s no longer a threat.”

“We’ll be the judge of that, Captain. I’m sure you can understand why your opinion of that would be considered biased.”

“It’s not an opinion -”

This time it was Tony who cut the conversation off before it could escalate. “Lay it out for us. What are you proposing?”

“Amendment 9a,” Harding replied. “Barnes comes back here and is confined to the Avengers’ Compound until a select committee decides he is free to leave.”

Tony froze. He had been expecting the Raft. Not that he had expected Steve to agree to that, ever, but the idea of having Barnes _here,_ under the same roof as him and Rhodey and, god, _Peter_ -

A microcosm of tension went out of Steve. “He’d live here?” He shot a look at Tony, saying softly. “The programming really is gone. I promise.”

Tony felt his chest close up, and fought back against the rising anxiety. Not here. Not now.

_You won’t help. No one will._

Tony forced a breath down. He’d pay for this later, he always did, but the tradeoff of having a more severe panic attack in private as opposed to ones in front of infuriating government officials was a price he was willing to pay. “So we put Barnes back under your observation, you get that warrant for the Raft? You’ll get Ross arrested?”

“If the search for the Raft confirms your story, we will launch an official inquiry into General-Secretary Ross, yes.”

“Bucky’s not going to be your prisoner,” Steve insisted. “He follows the same process as we all did. House arrest at the Compound for a probation period of three months. Then he’s free.”

“Six months,” Harding countered. “And only if he passes the tests we deem necessary.”

Steve looked like he wanted to argue further, but seemed to change tactics halfway through. “Fine. If you offer the same deal to Wanda Maximoff.”

“You are not in a position to bargain.”

“Considering what you offered me when I came back from Siberia, I think I am.”

Tony’s head whipped around, staring at Steve. It was the first time he’d heard of _that._

“Wanda Maximoff is a highly dangerous individual -”

“Who was a minor when a majority of her so-called crimes occurred,” Steve retorted. “Put the same deal for her on the table. Probation and house arrest if she returns to the Compound. No Raft.”

Harding considered that. “Probation and house arrest if she returns of her own free will,” he relented. “We catch her and she doesn’t come quietly? She goes to the Raft.”

“Agreed,” Tony said before Steve could argue. The point was moot anyway. The way Vision had laid out the reasons for his disappearance had made it pretty clear that he and Wanda’s plans to elope were permanent.

Harding nodded. “That is an arrangement we can live with. I will write up the paperwork.”

Of course he would. Tony glanced between Steve and Harding, Steve’s words about being offered something after Siberia still ringing in his ears. “I have one more condition.”

Harding didn’t look up from where he was packing his briefcase. “Mr Stark, you overestimate your bargaining position.”

Tony caught Steve’s eye, saw the wary question there, but Steve didn’t make any move to stop him. What the hell had been on the table post-Siberia? “You allow Bruce Banner to remain a free man. Without signing the Accords.”

Harding’s inflection didn’t change. “That is non-negotiable.”

“You want Barnes under your watch? I think it might be.” Harding paused, which was all Tony needed to keep going. “Banner’s not going to sign the Accords. He’s going to run.”

“Then he will be arrested.”

Tony scoffed. “And how exactly are you going to do that? You haven’t been successful in the past. Ross is proof of that.”

“Tony -” Steve started but Tony shot him a look. _You got to bargain for your friend. Now I get to bargain for mine._

“You saw the footage from the workshop. Banner’s Hulk days are over. He’s basically just a physicist who turns a little green now if you stick a pin in him. And because I know you, and who you work for, I know you’d rather have him where you can keep an eye on him. Which is here. Which you only get if you don’t force him to sign the Accords.”

Harding considered that. “He is still technically an enhanced.”

“Then I propose a new Amendment,” Tony replied. “Stop making all enhanced sign the Accords. Only the ones who are intending to actively use their powers in public spaces.”

“The government is entitled to know about potential threats.”

It seemed Steve had had enough of being quiet. “Like Triskelion? I know I haven’t exactly been in agreement with our leaders of late, sir, but I’d like to think they are at least better intentioned than Hydra.”

Harding snapped his briefcase shut. “You have one week to return Barnes to the States. In exchange, I will take this as a sign of your continued trust and cooperation and launch an investigation into General-Secretary Ross, provide a deal for Wanda Maximoff if she chooses to take it, and I will propose Mr Stark’s new amendment to the Accords committee.” He met Tony’s eye. His irises were oddly white, like the rest of him, reminding Tony of curdled milk. “Dr Banner will not be under any obligation to sign the Accords while we deliberate if he remains within the Avengers’ Compound. Are we understood?”

It was as good as they were going to get. “Peachy,” Tony said, with a winning smile. At least winning to some people, and infuriating to others. Harding waited until Steve said, “We’re understood,” until he marched from the room, leaving Steve and Tony alone.

Steve stood, apparently about to continue the conversation but Tony had put a lid on that panic attack long enough. “It’s done,” was all he said, making to leave the room.

“Can we at least talk about -”

“No,” Tony cut him off. “It’s done. Just go get him, Rogers. We both know it’s what you want.”

Then he left the room, not looking back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Whumptoberverse will continue in [Choices](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26980945)
> 
> You can check out my Bruce & Tony fic [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23682919/chapters/56856682).

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream at me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/jinxquickfoot), especially if you also write fanfic or do fanart! Share your work with me!
> 
> Hey are you tired of me plugging my podcast yet? Well if so that means you've clicked on a fair few of my fics and for that I am very grateful, kind reader. You could spend your time anywhere, and you spent it here, and that is quite wonderful of you.
> 
> "Kill the Cat" is a film and screenwriting podcast which my co-host and I take our favorite films and screenplays and break down why and how they work, and in a week we're releasing our episode on Avengers: Infinity War. If that sounds up your ally, pop over to [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ypaen3yM5Q&t=1s&ab_channel=KilltheCatPodcast), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/5hCprc9UCBZP4srFrBXKT1?si=0CF3IKjGThK0tohIqcEy4Q) or wherever you get your podcasts and hit that 'subscribe' to get notified when we release the episode.
> 
> And hey. That's a nice haircut.


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